


The Path of Sorrows, The Dragon Throne

by Nightheart



Category: Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Genre: Gen, animeverse, liberties taken with canon, post show
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightheart/pseuds/Nightheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeking to forget only makes exile all the longer, the secret to redemption lies in remembrance. Four Taiki and Yuka Sugimoto, the way forward lies in going back and only by walking the path of sorrows can they journey toward a new hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Book 1: The Path of Sorrows, Chapter 1
> 
> This for everyone as frustrated as I was when they came to the end of the TV show and found that the rest of Taiki's story was not finished or even followed up on. It seems to be one of those situations where if one wants something done, one must do it themselves.

She was greeted by Tai- er, Kaname's mother, who always seemed both pleased that she should take such an interest in her son, and wary of her for some reason. Perhaps she sensed Yuka's (carefully hidden) dislike of her. Yuka disliked the woman because she treated Kaname unfairly, she had no spine when it came to her husband, and she spoiled her other son to the point where it was a trial to be around the arrogant little brat. Still, it made no sense for Yuka to make an enemy of the woman so she was the model of politeness and kept her dislike to herself.

"Ah! Yuka-chan! So glad you could come today!" the woman said, all smiles and welcome.

Her other son was hovering in the background, just the same as he always did when she came to visit. He was scowling, also as usual. He still had a bit of a chip on his shoulder that Yuka had gone through him to gain more information on Kaname before she approached him. Well tough, the boy had enough of his own way at home; Yuka was not going to line up for him.

"Pleased to visit, Mrs. Takasoto, pardon the intrusion," Yuka said, bowing politely.

"Kaname's in his room, painting, as usual," Mrs. Takasoto said, motioning her in and setting out her usual guest shoes. "Go right on up, I'll be up with snacks in a few minutes."

"You don't need to go to any trouble," Yuka tried to reassure her.

In truth, the older woman was trouble. Because of her interruptions, Yuka had to wait until she knew the woman was out of hearing range before she could stop talking of inconsequentials like school and tests and get down to why she really came.

"Non-sense, no trouble at all," Mrs. Takasoto replied. "You're the only one who ever comes to visit my Kaname. My other boy has so many friends over all the time playing that game system we got him for New Years, but Kaname never had a single friend until you came along."

Yuka smiled politely because she had nothing she could say to a statement like that and hurried up to Kaname's room.

As ever it was filled with the scent of oil-paint and turpentine. Kaname stood in the light of the sole window of the room. It did not face north, so the hours when he could get truly good light to paint by were limited. Kaname disliked artificial light for painting. He worked away hurriedly, his brush-strokes quick and efficient but deft and certain as well. He was shaping up to have a wonderful talent. Yuka studied his painting, it was unfinished, the painting was done in the blurry style favored by impressionists like Monet and Van Gogh; the colors were vivid but the shapes and features in them were vague and dreamlike. Yuka could just make out an impression of a lions body, but light gleamed off from the tail of a snake and golden hair glinted softly in the diffusion of color.

"I had another dream last night, Yuka. This one was more vivid than any I've had all week," Kaname said in his quiet, almost emotionless voice.

She could make out what looked like the glow of a single candle in the background, and an impression of moonlight landing on some kind of cloth that had a soft sheen to it, probably silk.

"That's Sanshi," Yuka explained to him. "It's a creature from the other world, with the hindquarters of a lion, the torso of a woman, the tail of a snake and... I'm not sure what else."

She didn't tell him that she had heard from Youko that the creature had been bonded to him personally, like some kind of mutant nursemaid, but she didn't think he was quite ready to hear that bit yet. Kaname still thought he was human. She wondered whose job it was going to be to finally break it to him that he wasn't, and hoped it wouldn't fall to her. She was lousy with emotional conflicts.

"Tell me more about the other world," Kaname said.

Yuka smiled a little and made herself comfortable while he painted.

"After your mother comes in with those snacks she threatened I will," Yuka said.

Snacktime when Yuka visited was the only time that Kaname could get food without meat in it at home. Yuka used her status as a guest to get Mrs. Takasoto to give them vegetables and fruits and water (no dairy).

"Thank-you for coming over," Kaname said.

His eyes and attention were on his painting, but Yuka could hear the sincerity in his voice. Kaname knew he was different from others somehow, and while it was his nature to accept the world more passively than many would, that didn't mean that he didn't feel lonely because of it. Yuka often felt like more of a young mother to him than his mother was. Yuka felt personally that Kaname's mother did little for him, she never checked with him to see whether he was getting on fine in school or if he was being picked on, she never seemed to praise him or help him with his homework (Kaname never mentioned it anyway) and Yuka sensed that the only time she ever paid him any attention at all was when he was doing something she didn't like.

Any other parent would have covered the walls of their home in his paintings! Yuka thought irritably to herself.

"You're doing it again," Kaname reminded her.

Yuka took a breath to calm her spike of irritation. Anyone else would have thought it unnatural how attuned Kaname was to the emotions of the people around him (and the other students at school did avoid him and whisper about it) but to Yuka it was only to be expected. It was his unique and special nature.

"I was just thinking that it's a shame that your mother does not display your work," Yuka replied. "Any other parent I could think of, except maybe mine-"

Her father would have displayed them (if she'd had the talent to paint the way Kaname did), but not because he liked them or thought that they had any real merit, but because doing so would enable them to boast of artistic talent in her family. As it stood, her father felt that if Yuka couldn't be born a natural child prodigy, then she should work her fingers to the bone to create the illusion of being one. She had grown to detest the violin for a number of reasons.

"- would be pleased to display them," Yuka informed him.

"Mother doesn't like them," Kaname said tonelessly. "She says that they look strange to her and she doesn't like the weird subjects of them."

"What about that map? The one you entered in the competition and won first place with?" Yuka questioned.

"I told the teacher to keep it. Mom said it didn't match the furniture."

A likely excuse. Didn't match the furniture indeed!

"Why are you so angry?"

"I'm not angry, I'm upset on your behalf," Yuka clarified, though she was aware she did still have some issues with her aggression.

She was just born in the wrong era. Everything was so tame and moderate in these modern days, everyone was expected to conform, to be nice, to bow politely. No-one seemed to fight for what they believed in anymore, and if a person was willing to do so they got labeled as violent and sent off to places for "sensitivity training' where they were made to turn all of their feelings into pasty, socially acceptable mealy little things without any fire behind them.

Yuka often wondered why she had ever come back. What had she been thinking? How could she have ever thought she could be happy marrying some mealy-mouthed little salary-man and raising three kids in the suburbs? What kind of life was that? This world she lived in drove her nuts, living in it was like always walking around with a shirt and shoes that are about half a size too small; tight in strange places and never quite right. She felt restless.

"You don't need to be, you know," Kaname said quietly. "I'm fine."

No you're not, you'll never be fine in this place. Not completely. You're too different. You're meant for something else, she thought at him, but said nothing out loud.

Kaname paused in his work and looked over at her, searchingly. She didn't actually think he could hear thoughts, but he must have picked up on the pity behind them.

"Why do you always feel sorry for me?" Kaname asked her honestly.

"Because," she avoided.

She knew already that she could not lie to him; it was the nature of the kirin to sense a lie. Dishonesty was as contrary to their nature as violence.

"Besides, who else would listen to my stories?" she changed the subject adroitly.

Kaname smiled his small, quiet smile as they listened to the sounds of his mother coming up the stairs and trying to do it silently so that she could overhear what they were speaking about. When she had gone, Yuka began to tell her Kaname about how babies were born on trees in the other world.

Kaname looked saddened as she told them how the whole village might join in an impromptu festival the moment a fruit appeared in answer to a hopeful set of parents petition to the gods for a child.

"So, there are no unwanted children over there..." he said sadly.

Yuka mentally kicked herself for picking that topic. She wasn't good with people, but even she was not so dense that she couldn't tell that Kaname felt unloved and unwelcome in his own home. His father was absent (apparently as much as possible) on business trips for much of the time. His mother was unnerved by him and lavished most of her time and affection on her younger, natural son.

He sighed a little, softly and murmured

"It must be nice..."

Yuka tried not to show how surprised she felt by that statement. In all of the time she had been telling these tales to him she had never once heard him say anything about them, either positive or negative. He'd never ventured a comment or opinion about them and Yuka was so taken aback and elated she wasn't sure how to proceed right away. She wanted to encourage his interest, but she knew if she pressured him he'd curl right back up into his shell again. She worded her next sentence carefully.

"It is by no means a perfect world," she said. "Even though the gods that rule it and set the system in place clearly tried their very hardest to make a world that would be fair, it cannot be so. There are people that are unwanted there, people that are abused and neglected, abandoned and betrayed. There are corrupt kings who use people to their own ends-"

Oh she knew that last one quite well. Granted, the king in question had been dying because he had lost the Way and denied the Mandate of Heaven, but it had still happened.

"And court officials who over-tax and live well, while their people starve."

Suddenly, she was seized by an inspiration. She wondered if she should do it. Up until now she had been very quiet, very circumspect about the role of kings and kirin in that other world. She didn't want to push too hard, but she had made a breakthrough today, perhaps now was the time!

Well, why not? she thought to herself. One did not gain without risk, after all.

"But that is why they have the kirin!" Yuka said, injecting her voice with as much cheer and excitement as she could.

She was excited, but mostly because she was really going to try to get through to him. She was being cheerful so that maybe he'd like the idea right away.

"Kirin?" Kaname asked, sounding intrigued in spite of himself. "Like, mythical unicorns?"

"Yes exactly, though in the other world, they don't just have the form of a horse, they can also change shape so they look like men or women too. They have a very special, very unique job over there..."

"Like what?" Kaname asked, clearly being drawn in against his will.

Part of him wanted to know this, she could just feel it.

"Well, you remember how I told you that there are twelve kingdoms?"

He nodded.

"Each of these kingdoms is ruled over by a king or queen, but that person isn't born into a royal family like over here. Over there, in order to be a ruler you have to be chosen by a very special creature that is mandated by the gods. The Kirin. The Kirin picks out the next ruler when the old one has died."

"How?" Kaname asked.

"I don't know," Yuka replied. "I think that's something only the kirin know. And when they chose the next ruler they get down on their knees like this..."

Yuka knelt down, as though she were kowtowing herself in abject apology. It was not a natural pose for her to assume, and it felt a little odd doing it in her modern setting.

"And they say...'I swear never to desert my post before your throne.'"

Kaname froze, his gaze turned inward and Yuka wondered if she'd pushed things too far when she saw tears well up in his eyes. His voice was shaky as he broke the silence

"And then what?" he asked sounding short of breath.

"And then the prospective ruler accepts the will of heaven," Yuka said. "And the two of them enter into a one-of-a-kind compact."

"What kind of compact?"

"In order to rule a country effectively, the gods seem to feel it was necessary to have balance, an intellect to rule wisely and a heart to rule well. Rulers must often make very difficult decisions and commit actions which would go against kindness; it is the nature of ruling a kingdom. But on the other hand, a ruler who rules only with his head will not take into account the suffering and sorrows of his people. So the ruler leads the people, but there is a check on him or her in the form of the kirin, whose job it is to be the heart. He's the one who tells the ruler if his decree is too harsh or if he is not taking the needs of the people into account."

"The heart of the throne..." Kaname murmured.

"The two of them rule together until..." Yuka trailed off, reluctant to explain everything about it. She still remembered well that fateful night and the revelation of the King of Kou. She wasn't sure she wanted to go into the gory details just yet, so she simply said

"Until the ruler dies."

"And then the kirin has to pick another one?" Kaname asked.

"Ye-es," Yuka said a bit hesitantly.

"You are upset," Kaname stated.

"It's a sad business," Yuka replied deciding she would leave it at that. "Gosh, look at the time. I've been here for hours! I should really get back home, I still have to log in my practice hours or Father's going to cut off my escrima privileges."

Kaname looked at her steadily, perfectly well aware that, while she was speaking truthfully, it was an excuse. She smiled softly, and a touch ruefully, and rose to depart.

"Sleep well," she said, going to leave.

"Yuka?" he called over to her as she reached the door handle.

"Yes?" she asked, turning to look back.

He seemed to hesitate. Then he opened his mouth again, looking uncertain of what he wanted to say.

"What do you think it's like... to be the heart of the throne?"

Yuka took a moment to consider it before she answered.

"I think it must be confusing," she pronounced at last, thinking of Kourin and her fate; and the actions and fate of her ruler, King Kou.

Yuka had thought it sad that Kourin should be so good and so loving, and yet shackled to a ruler who would not stop what he was doing even though it caused his poor helpless kirin, who had never done anything but try to support him to the best of her abilities, fall ill of shitsudou. The king of Kou had made an essential slave of one who should have been his partner.

"Kirin are created by forces outside of their control for a purpose and a destiny they won't always have much of a say in," she replied. "So much seems to happen to them and it often seems that the only thing they can do is to try their best with what they are given."


	2. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 2

Tanlin was carried more than led by the five guards that surrounded her. Her crime was officially listed as "treason" though she considered herself as more of a patriot than a traitor.

: _The only traitor in this place is that man who sits on the throne and calls himself king, but rules without the will of Heaven_ ,: she thought fiercely.

It had been nearly six years since the disappearance of Tai's rightful king, Gyousou Saku and the kirin of Tai, Taiki. What could only be rightly called a usurper now sat upon the throne. Tanlin was more aware of what went on within the confines of Whitejewel Palace than an average person. The previous king, Kyou-ou had been a man fond not only of creature comforts, extravagant jewels and silks, and a generous patron of the arts (so generous and extravagant was he that, even before his kirin had underwent shitsudou, the kingdom's treasury had been bankrupt) but also a great lover of women. He had had an entire wing of the palace devoted as his harem before he'd died. On his own ascension, as Gyousou was releasing servants and firing musicians left and right, he had often wondered what should be done with the burden of all of the women in the royal harem.

: _Being the uptight, virtuous, military sort, the general wasn't interested in dallying about with us ladies_ ,: Tanlin thought with a feeling of lingering amusement at the look if shock and dismay she had seen on the new kings face as he finished his first tour of the royal palace and discovered just how vast the collection of women that his predecessor had been housing (at the expense of the state no less) really was.

The women of the harem had been fed and clothed with the finest during the reign of the former king, and had also had an army of servant to attend to them. Unlike the musicians, the courtesans of Whitejewel Palace had no real marketable skill other than their, ah… _skill_. The newly crowned King Gyousou had not, in good conscience, been able to simply turn them out into the cold without a means for the courtesans to support themselves. It was another mark of his kindness that he'd simply shelved the matter for later discussion and cut their inner-palace budget to a minimum then released nearly all of their servants. There had been a tempest in a tea kettle in the day that the pampered palace ladies had learned that they were all expected to learn to care for themselves… the delicate blossoms had never once so much as had to lift a finger to do menial tasks were now expected to launder and clean and wash their own articles and tidy their own chambers.

: _There is no denying that, though his time of rule was short, General Saku was a man of vast virtue… if more than a little uptight_.:

It had been later on that year that King Gyousou had disappeared while quelling a rebellion in one of his northern provinces. The women of the harem had ( _then_ ) felt the person who had taken over the court in the chaos surrounding the disappearance of the ruler was an improvement on him. General Ansen, the general of the Left (and the former General Gyousou's "twin jewel") took over the court on the absence of king and kirin in order to hold things together _supposedly_ until the king and his kirin could be found once again.

: _After six years with no sign of either of them, I don't think anyone else is buying Ansen's claim to power as being only a temporary seizure during an interregnum_.:

Especially not once the Black Guard, Ansen's own private army comprised of cast-offs and mercenaries from the other kingdoms, started showing up and securing key locations. At first it had been touted as "pacifying the countryside" in the absence of the king. Tamlin, a courtesan attached to the west wing of the palace had only had the rumors going around the palace to believe, and at first, along with all of the other women of the harem, she had believed the official story.

: _I feel like I was so naïve back then_ ,: she thought ruefully.

The women of the harem were generally kept within the harem walls anyway so they had little to go on but the gossip and rumors flying through the palace. The palace itself was isolated from the rest of the world below by the height of the mountain on which it was built. Even then, and with the general preference within the harem for the more liberal reign of Ansen, there had been questions about him. The military, as loyal to Ansen as to their liege Gyousou, caught onto the danger too late.

It had been three years ago when Ansen's "temporary" grasp of power became a full-blown coup. Tanlin had heard through the rumor mill that a secret cabal of some officers and civil officials that resented Gyousou's rise to power had banded together and killed him during the civil conflict and kidnapped the kirin of Tai. Ansen had "reacted" by ordering his personal army, the Black Guard to round up the traitors and put them to death. Tamlin hadn't been aware of it at that point, but this purge was actually a coup by the usurper to get rid of the last true supporters of the king and put his own men in place.

: _It was around this time that the first of us began to disappear_ ,: Tanlin thought with sorrow and regret.

If only she had known, there might have been something she could have done, some way she could have gotten word out or help before she too had been trapped within the walls of the harem. When she thought of how she had spent her afternoons primping before the mirror and trying on outfit after outfit to determine which one was more likely to catch the eye of the current man in power, she could only regret her foolishness.

It had started with Kelya, one of her rivals (they had all been rivals more or less in those days, but Kelya had been a particular rival of hers with her milk-white skin and refined oval features). She had been summoned to the rooms of Ansen. It had been kept quiet at the time, but rumors always circulated through the harem. When she had not returned the next morning, most girls had taken it as confirmed that Ansen had chosen a favorite and had his concubine's quarters moved closer to his own. After several days had went by, another of the courtesans was summoned. This caused a small wave of gossip, but no real fear or anxiety… _that_ came later, when the numbers of the courtesans who were missing started to grow at a steady rate.

: _It was also at this time when he started bringing in women from the outside_.:

That had caused a sea-change in the way that the harem was run. First, there were guards posted everywhere. But that was not the most shocking thing, the most shocking thing was that the women brought in were not courtesans at all, but rather they were true noblewomen! From every province which would not immediately swear their fealty to the usurper, Ansen had taken hostages to compel the magistrates and noblemen of those places to rule their counties as well as they could… or their families would suffer the consequences.

The women of the harem got their first real news of the outside world, and the picture it painted had not been pretty; black guards had taken over the positions formerly held but officers in the military of the kingdom of Tai, the countryside was overrun with youma, and crops were not as easy to plant due to a decline in population.

: _Because there's nothing like a herd of rampaging monsters on your land to mess with your population numbers_.:

It was then that Tanlin had decided that she would do what she could from her position inside the palace to help the true defenders of the kingdom of Tai do what they could to restore their poor kingdom to the balance of Heaven. She listened to rumors and tried to gather information but she'd had no real way of getting it out to anyone who would do something with it. As a spy, she was… well, she was probably not cut out for it. She had tried to search around the palace for any news of the rightful king, and had wound up getting herself caught and sentenced to execution by the usurper-king instead.

The numbers of the original courtesans from the previous king had numbered well into the triple digits but after three years of disappearances they were all almost all gone.

: _I'm one of the last of them_ ,: Tanlin thought with regret as she was led into a part of the palace she had never seen before.

She didn't know where it was she was going, just the same as she didn't know where it was her sisters had gone, but Tanlin was certain she wouldn't be returning from it.

The place where she was being led to was in a section of the palace she had never seen nor heard of before, it was in a small tower, down a staircase under a hatch in the floor guarded by soldiers ringed all around it from above, there was a long corridor with many doors, all of them locked, then a door in the wall sharply to the right led her down another staircase that went down for so long Tanlin thought she might be walking all the way down the mountain itself. At the landing a the bottom of the stairs was another door, this one locked with a great number of locks.

Waiting for her on the other side of the door was Ansen himself.

: _I can't believe there was a time when I thought him handsome_!: Tanlin thought with venom. : _If my mouth wasn't gagged I'd spit on him_.:

Despite the fact that he was indeed a usurper, General Ansen was a physically attractive man. His form was lean and broad of shoulder, with a leonine grace that came from maintenance for the arts of war. His face indeed had a graceful evenness to it, his hair was back as a raven's wing, but there was something about his eyes… they held a sharpness, but unlike King Gyousou's which had held a measure of kindness in them, (despite the King's often intimidating aura) Ansen's eyes sparkled darkly, with a ruthless intelligence.

"It's almost a pity to see you here Tanlin," Ansen said, not sounding sorry at all. "But I think we both know it would have wound up this way sooner or later. And who knows, maybe you'll come out of it alive and be useful for my purposes. I wouldn't lay long odds on that one however, considering your… _unique_ background."

Tanlin was led over to a long twisting staircase that spiraled down into a deep, deep hole that went down for a very long way. Torches had been wedged into natural ledges carved into the rock of the pit along the way down and they flickered dimly in the gloom. Stones rattled over the lip of the hole as Tanlin fought being forced over to the place. They took a frighteningly long time to fall to the bottom and when they did thy hit with the plinking sound of a stone being dropped into water.

Because she was gagged, all she could do was glare back at the man who called himself king with false bravado. He might have the power of life and death over her right then, but she could at least die with her pride.

"Maybe you will live after all, no tears I see, so you certainly seem to have more spirit than many of the girls that came before you," he said in a musing tone, as though they were discussing nothing of greater importance than what he intended to eat for dinner that night.

"I suppose your spirit merits you one final courtesy," Ansen said as he reached behind her head and loosened the knot on the gag and allowed it to drop from her face.

Tanlin didn't waste her breath on screaming, instead she looked right back at the false king and said

"It doesn't matter how long you sit on that throne, one day our king will return! King Gyousou rules by the will of Heaven and no matter what you do, you cannot win against that. He'll find you, and he will stop you!"

Instead of being dismayed by her reminder that his time on the throne was limited, Ansen only looked back at her with amusement.

"You're not the first of your number to say such things to me, and really, it amuses me every time. I can never seem to get enough of the look on your courtesan faces when you see the truth."

"What truth is that?" Tanlin demanded, trying not to let her voice quaver.

"Here… let me show you."

Ansen spun on a heel and led her back away from the edge of the pit, out of the small side-cavern and down deeper along the main hall. He led her to another door and up a short flight of stairs, down through a small hall that twisted and turned in what looked like tunnels that had been carved by the hand of nature rather than by man, along the rock. There was another door with a great number of rocks in it. The door swung open into a vast, naturally carved stone cavern. The walls looked frosted with ice and snow, which was odd because the temperature didn't feel any different than any of the other caverns. The floor was rough and uneven with tall pillars of white stalagmite rock formations.

"Look closely," Ansen said, bringing a nearby torch to bear on the ice-like stalagmites jutting up from the ground.

The light shone through the crystal pillar, sparkling like sunlight through the icicles on the eaves of a house in wintertime.

"That is-!" Tanlin gasped in shock and dismay.

The crystal pillars that lined the walls and jutted up throughout most of the cavernous room held figures frozen into them, like leaves in the fall trapped in the ice of winter. They were figures that Tanlin, from her long familiarity with the court and ministry of the palace, recognized. They were all of the ministers and soldiers, military and government officials that had objected to Ansen's "temporary measures" in the beginning of the interregnum and had disappeared one by one over the last several years.

"That's minister Shensou, and Minister Li, and…" she said in horrified dismay as she touched the cool (but, oddly, not ice-cold) surface of the nearest pillar holding a face she recognized. Each of the figures frozen in the pillars wore chains, and looked asleep, but their frozen features lacked the grey pallor of death. They were still alive somehow.

"Are you surprised? Have you ever seen such a thing? I'll wager you haven't," Ansen said smugly. "The substance holds them in a deep, ageless sleep and is impermeable. One would have to have the right antidote to melt them from their prisons, and only I know the formula for the mixture. But come, I haven't shown you the, heh, crown jewel of my collection."

Tanlin was almost afraid to know what else this man might choose to show her, but followed him anyway, deeper into the cavern. She tried to ignore all of the faces of the people frozen in the… whatever it was, that surrounded her, a moment later she had something to take her mind off from her feelings of unease.

Ansen stopped her just at the outside of a ring made of white stones that circled around a stone dais placed in the exact center of the cave, and surround by what appeared to be five large stone boulders at even intervals.

: _What kind of boulders would have chains surrounding them?:_ Tanlin wondered idly to herself then switched her attention to the other mystery in the room.

The dais placed before her did not hold any sort of artifact or great treasure, instead the entire surface of it was covered in sharp up-jutting spikes of metal. The tips were pointed and it even seemed like the edges of the spikes were sharpened with serrations.

: _Why would anyone put up such an unusual arrangement_?: she wondered to herself, not seeing anything that would cause Ansen to gloat, some rocks and a few spikes of metal sticking up out of the ground.

"Look _up_ , courtesan," Ansen prompted.

Tanlin obediently did so, what she saw in the flickering torchlight made her heart sink to her toes. There was a great metal chain hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the cavern which soared many, many feet above her head. Dangling at the end of the chain was what looked like a series of intricate metal cages, one inside the other inside the other, and she could just see something glinting inside the very center cage, glittering in the air like sunlight through ice.

"As you can see, courtesan, my former twin general is the very least and last of my worries."

"Your majesty," she whispered in despair, certain that that _had_ to be who hung there in the cage above the spikes.

"Even if someone managed to get past the guards posted in this place," Ansen added. "That chain is attached to a number of traps to take out anyone fool enough to try to rescue him. Even if they made it past the traps, there are still the cages to unlock, and a single mistake made in the unlocking them will cause the rescuer to be locked in with his prize. A few have made it that far…"

He gestured to a small pile of bones made into a macabre arrangement, like a child stacking wooden blocks.

"Even on the miraculous chance that they should some how manage to rescue him from out of this place… they'll never free him from the shell that contains him. The substance is as hard as stone, so any blow hard enough to shatter it would also shatter the person inside of it. That's assuming they could somehow manage to _get_ to the king _at_ _all_ …"

At that moment one of the rock formations, or rather, what Tanlin had taken to be rock formations, suddenly _moved_. Unwinding itself from its curled up pose of rest, the "boulder" resolved itself into a form with a long, serpentine neck, a great triangular head sporting powerful jaws filled with sharp cruel fangs, enormous talons on the ends of powerful haunches and forelimbs gripped the stone, a hide of scales that were tougher than armor glittered in the torchlight and lastly there was a creak and snap as two great wings of leather, gleaming with a strangely beautiful iridescence in the light snapped out and beat at the air for a second before falling into place on its back. The creature looked out at her with soul-less hungry eyes, clearly debating with itself about the feasibility of her usefulness for a snack.

"Drakh!" she gasped in fear and alarm, backing away from it instinctively.

Even in the ranks of monstrous beasts there were youma and then there were _youma_. Most youma would only be large enough and fierce enough to handle two or three people at a time; certainly, they could cause damage, but with concentrated effort, planning and coordination, it was possible for a town guard to drive them off. Tanlin had only heard stories of the drakh, but _they_ were a (thankfully rare) species of youma that made armies weep in despair. They were so large, and so fierce and so dangerous that it was said even the earth trembled at their onset. Drakh had hides that could not be pierced by weapons, it was said. They could change their forms, fly, and harness the power of the elements with their breath. According to legend, whole armies had been decimated by the attack of a single drakh.

: _And here are five of them_ …: she thought in despair.

It would be impossible for anyone but a god in physical form to make it past that many drakh, they were simply to powerful.

"So as you can see, the rightful king is well-protected. Even if the kirin of Tai should ever manage to return and find his liege, Gyousou here will never be restored to the throne. The destiny of this kingdom is in my hands."

On that note, Tanlin was led out of the chamber and back down the hall to the fate that had awaited all of her sister courtesans, and now awaited her.

The pit at the bottom of the other cave didn't look any shallower the second time she saw it, and the narrow twisting stone stair she was all but shoved down onto seemed to go on forever as she descended down it. There was a small landing at the bottom surrounded on all sides by water. Torchlight flickered dimly in the gloom, a dense mist hovered over the surface of the water as Tanlin looked around her.

"Ah… my poor sisters!" she gasped in sorrow. "I fear that our kingdom may forever live outside the protection of the Emperor of Heaven. An immortal usurper sits upon the throne, whose status on the Registry can only be revoked by the King, and the King is sealed away in an ageless sleep that cannot be broken except by his usurper."

The man had covered every contingency, the army was his, the castle was his and even their great and fearless king was unable to strike at him. Taiki was still no-where to be found, and even if he were, the king was sealed away from him, he could not die and so the kirin could not even choose a new king. Tai was going to need a miracle.

The waters surrounding her started to ripple and lap at the edges of the small island she stood upon. What she had taken to be stone islands breaking the surface of the water, began to move with an unhurried deliberation all around her. Two wide, lambent pools of blue-green light gleamed in the night, shining dimly through the mists just over the surface of the water. The lights reared up over her, the form resolving into what Tanlin recognized (by descriptions from stories) as belonging to the legendary gorkuren "the ice-fire beast".

Its head wove from side to side, and Tanlin watched it with all the fascination of a mouse caught in the gaze of a snake. There was no point in even trying to run, the gorkuren, even if it were not faster than the winds in its home habitat, breathed the cleansing fire.

: _Unfortunately, the miracle will not be held by me_ ,: Tanlin thought.

The world around her faded to white light and her sad, sheltered life flickered out like the last candle in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.N. Because this story is based off the anime, I had to take a few liberties with the storyline. When I started writing this fic I had not been able to find a copy of the book The Sky At Dawn which told of what happened next after the anime ended, the only thing I had to go on had been a short not-very-detailed synopsis posted on someone's blog that I'd found using Google. That post had listed the main bad guy's name as Ansen and not Asen. By the time I read Eugene Wood's wonderful translation I'd already written about fifteen chapters and didn't feel like changing it.
> 
> This particular chapter by the way is an insert/rewrite. I could never figure out how exactly to word what I wanted to put. It was only after I'd figured out how Ansen got away with holding an awesome guy like Gyousou Saku prisoner somehow (I couldn't imagine he would have been held prisoner, and amnesia would have been redundant) that I could figure out what to put in this chapter... which it sort of a weird way to go about writing it now that I think about it.
> 
> Reveiws are love... love me? Even a little? That's okay, I resigned myself to the fact that this is probably going to be the least popular thing I've ever written. It gets better, I promise.


	3. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 3

She awoke feeling cold from the inside, a chill feeling of premonition hummed in her bones. She tried to ignore it, to turn over and go back to sleep, but the feeling persisted until she could no longer stand it. Yuka got up from her bed and went over to her window to look out into the night in order to see if it wasn't just some noise from outside that had woken her. Part of her, like a little child, wanted to turn the light on and chase away the shadows. The street in front of her window was silent and unoccupied and gleamed blackly from the light of a distant street lamp. She couldn't see anything amiss, no furtive movements caught her eye, but the strange feeling wouldn't go away. She stared out into the night for a long moment, trying to discern what was bothering her, the leaves in the tree in front of her window shushed more loudly as the wind began to pick up.

: _A storm_!: part of her whispered in the back of her mind. : _And not just any storm, but one of those world-gate storms like Keiki can make._ :

She could feel the heady tension, its unique gravity building up. This was not just any storm. The unexpected had occurred, a one chance miracle. All she had to do was get the unicorn over to the pier and dump him in it, and he'd be over in the other world! He could fulfill his destiny and help his king and finally be what he was supposed to be.

Yuka, already out of bed, felt galvanized into sudden action.

: _Hmmm, he'll need things that can help him survive over there until he can find his Tai-Ou_ ,: she thought.

She recalled very well how deeply she had worried about getting money for food or finding a way to defend herself against youma and bandits, and how difficult it had always seemed to be to start a fire to even keep warm without some of the modern tools she took for granted.

Yuka pulled the duffle bag she used for her after school escrima classes out from under her bed and dumped the contents out and refilled it with useful things like water bottles and zippo lighters. Anyhting that she could think of that she would have desperately liked to have the last time she was in the other world.

: _That should about do it_ ,: she thought to herself as she quickly dressed herself in a pair of durable jeans, hiking shoes, a cotton shirt and a poly-pro hoodie over it.

She'd had to pack in a hurry because she didn't know how long the storm was going to last and she still had to get Kaname out of bed, sneak him out of the house. Sneaking out of her own house wasn't much of a problem, she lived on her own to attend her expensive school so all she had to do was open her window, sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a tree. It was a short jog to the place where Kaname lived and she spent a few minutes in the rising wind, casing the place for a way to get in undetected. Yuka looked around back and discovered a way to get on the roof, there was a tool-shed next to the chain-link fence that separated their yard from the neighbors yard and that tool-shed was only a few feet shorter than the roof of their house.

: _Lucky I'm an athletic kind of girl_ ,: she thought dryly to herself.

Wary of time passing, she quickly shimmied up the fence, walked carefully across the cheap tin roof of the toolshed, slid up onto the shingled roof of the house and walked carefully across the slanted surface over to kaname's window.

: _Ah, and fortune smiles yet again, those gods from the other realm must have some pull over here_ ,: she thought as she discovered that Kaname slept with his window cracked. She pushed it the rest of the way open and slowly let herself down onto the surface of his desk.

She heard him moan softly in his sleep, as if in protest, and he tossed restlessly. He struggled with the blanket as if wrestling with a demon, and tried to struggle away from the creature plaguing his dreams. Yuka was about to go over there and wake him up when he suddenly jolted awake, sitting up straight in bed, his skin covered in sweat and his eyes wide with terror. He was shaking and panting and when he saw her form crouched there in the shadows he looked about to scream.

"Shhhh!" she shushed him harshly and desperately.

"It's just me!" she hissed.

"Y-Yuka? What are you doing here? And in the middle of the night?" he asked her, clearly still shaken.

She debated about exactly what to say. And decided to redirect it for now.

"You had a nightmare?"

"Y-Yeah, a really bad one. It was terrifying. There were these creatures in them all yelling at me, and when I tried to run away the kept following me and they wouldn't leave me alone."

"They're trying to get you to go back to your duty," Yuka muttered feeling a little sorry for Taiki's protectors.

"Huh?" he asked cluelessly.

"Nevermind that now, we have to go."

"What are you talking about, it's the middle of the night!"

"Shh! she hissed at him again, drawing a finger over her lips and glaring him into silence. She could be scary and intimidating despite her size when she wanted to be. Kaname shut up.

"Come on, get dressed. Wear something warm," she commanded him, prodding him out of his bed and then rummaging through his closet for extra clothes. She settled on a plain, durable pair of pants three warm-looking shirts and extra socks. She debated about adding in the rain poncho and decided it would be better for him to have it and not need it than need it and not have it and added that to the top of the pack.

"Don't wear your school shoes, those will never last you, put those hiking boots in the bottom of your closet on. Do they fit?"

"Y-yes, a gift from father for-"

"Nevermind, hurry up," she urged impatiently.

Kaname obediently complied. Yuka mentally shook her head at that, it was good for her now, but someday the boy was going to have to grow a spine. He couldn't be half of a throne if he didn't know how to speak up.

"Why are you here? You're not supposed to be here. If you get caught-"

"I know, she said flatly. "I'm here to get you out of this place and back where you belong."

"What? I don't under-"

"Quiet now," she cautioned him, pulling, pushing and nagging him up onto his desk and out of his window.

Despite his obvious misgivings he complied with her orders and trustingly followed her out onto the roof. Yuka shut the window and wiped down the ledge for prints as an afterthought. She guided him across the roof, and down to the ground then across the lawn, out the gate and towards the pier.

"Where are we going?" Kaname asked her, sounding nervous.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Yuka replied. "But for now, we're going to the pier."

"Why are we going there in the middle of the night?" Kaname asked next.

"Because this is your only chance," Yuka said cryptically, indeed the wind had gone from a shush in the trees to an anticipatory murmur and she could hear the distant growl of thunder off to the west.

Kaname paused and looked at her for a long searching minute then his gave focused inward for a long, shocked moment, after which his expression changed to one of disbelief.

"I just heard-" he said, gasping.

"You heard a voice from another person coming from inside of you," Yuka surmised. "A voice you've only heard in your dreams until now."

She might not have gotten the role of the heroine in the story, but at the very least she could be the protector and the guide for the real hero. That was a good role, a short one, and dear god she hoped she didn't end up dying tragically, but it was still a good role.

"The voice you heard belongs to your shirei, I believe she said its name was Sanshi."

"Who said, what?" Kaname questioned, clearly utterly bewildered. "What's a shi-whatsit?"

"I'm not sure exactly, I've only head of them in passing. I saw Keiki's briefly, but as I understand it, they're sort of like mutant nursemaids."

Kaname blinked at her and said

"Boy, she really didn't like that."

Yuka smiled briefly and urged him on faster, there were no trains running this late so she was taking every shortcut she knew to get him there on foot. Kaname tried to continue to question her, but soon needed all of his breath for running in order to keep up with her. They reached the coastline just as the storm started up in earnest, the lightning was still a ways off, but the waves were already crashing over the breakers and nearly up to where they stood in the street.

"We should go home," Kaname urged her. "You'll get in-"

"You are going home," Yuka cut him off. "I know this is a lot to take in all at once and you have no real reason to believe me, but your whole life here has been a lie. You weren't born n this world, you weren't even supposed to be here."

Kaname gasped at her, looking terribly hurt. Yuka hit her forehead against her hand and, frustrated, said

"I didn't mean it how that came out sounding! Kaname, I'm here to help you. I meant that you're not supposed to be here in this world with that stupid family of yours, you have a greater destiny waiting for you somewhere else."

"Y-You're crazy!" Kaname said.

He didn't really sound like he meant it though and for him to make an accusation like that off-hand was a testament to how very off balance he was. What he'd said had been partly meant as an insult as well as a statement of fact and Kirin did not use insults. To them, words were a kind of violence as well, and they always chose the ones that would do good rather than harm.

"You've built up this world inside your head and now you actually think it's real and-"

A particularly loud bolt of lightning struck near the water and the waves, which until now had been moving frantically towards the shore, started to change direction. A glowing whirlpool started to take shape in front of them. Kaname backed up and instinctively turned towards her, shivering, ducking into Yuka's arms as though she could fend off the glowing abyss.

"Yuka! I'm scared! Let's go back, please!" Kaname begged.

She felt bad for him, she really did. Over the time she'd spent together with him Yuka had genuinely grown to like the quiet pacifist. If he never said two words more than necessary the words he did say were always effective and even though he was aloof from people he was never ever unkind. He was sweet. He couldn't fight or defend himself so Yuka had taken it upon herself to do that part. As a result she had come to see herself as being sort of his protector and guardian. She admired his intellectual brilliance but at the same time was exasperated by his utter unworldliness. She felt her protective, almost maternal, instinct rear up at the thought of handing him the pack she'd made and dumping him down that hole to do whatever it was he was supposed to do over there without a friend in the world.

: _I can't send him out into that big scary world all on his own, something's going to eat him! Or some bandit's going to kidnap him and try to sell him_.: Yuka thought in dismay.

Kaname wouldn't know the first thing about taking care of himself, he couldn't cook (or eat meat for that matter) he didn't know how to start a campfire or defend himself. He fainted at the sight of blood, what was he going to do if he got into a fight? He was going to surrender that was what he was going to do. She didn't even want to think of what that world over there would do to someone that was as docile as he was.

: _But this could well be his only chance to go back home_ ,: she thought desperately.

She had to send him back, it was his destiny. He was a kirin, he didn't belong here and his kingdom needed him!

"Kaname, you mustn't be scared okay?" Yuka said, pushing him back a little so he could look into her face. "This is supposed to happen, this is where you are supposed to go, alright? This will take you where you belong. Remember, your name is not Kaname Takasoto, your name is Taiki, the Kirin of Tai."

"..." Kaname stared at her in open mouthed shock.

"When you get over there, go to the kingdom of Kei and try to speak to the Queen, her name is Youko-"

"Wait that's the name of-" Kaname recognized.

"Tell her you are the Tai kirin and you're looking for your king," Yuka overid him. "If they don't believe you because you can't transform or you can't get in right away, bribe a guard or a court official to send her a note written in this worlds writing. Tell her that Yuka Sugimoto sent you and-"

The wind by this point had picked up to typhoon speeds and she was nearly bent over trying to fight it and shouting over the storm. Kaname was having none of her urging him any closer to that whirlpool. He clung around her waist and dug his heels in, Yuka really did not see how she was supposed to extricate herself from his grasp. Still, will he or nil he, they drew closer to the brink.

"Yuuukaaaa!" he wailed like a child. "I'm scared!"

"I know," she said helplessly.

Really, what else could she say? She still remembered her first trip across the two worlds and she'd been terrified the whole way down. It couldn't be any better for him, who was probably experiencing flashes from his first (probably terrifying) trip in addition to being stranded out in the middle of a storm.

She abruptly made an executive decision. She knew deep down that if she just pushed him into the hole and walked away she'd spend the rest of her life wondering about him. She'd probably play over and over in her mind all of the horrible things that could have happened to him without someone to look out for him. She couldn't just leave him alone and helpless without anyone to defend him or make certain he had a friend.

"If you want something done right, you must do it yourself," she muttered, ignoring the pang of guilt she felt over going against her promise to Kyouko to stay in that world, get married and have ten kids. After all, once she was sure Taiki was okay, there was no reason why she couldn't come back... right?

"I wanna go back to my room," Kaname said, sounding maybe half his physical age.

He clung tightly to her waist as any child would cling to his mother when faced with something so frightening.

"You can't go back," Yuka said firmly. "The only way for you is forward. Don't worry, I'm right here for you. As long as you still need me I won't leave your side."

And with that, she secured her travel pack and weapons on her back, wrapped her arms tightly around Kaname, and tipped them both into the void.


	4. Interlude I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Warning: this mini-fic takes place before the events of The Shore of The Labyrinth, when the previous king of Tai is still alive. It has some small mention of some of the events featured in that story but most of this is my own speculation. Enjoy!)

"A fine day for a hunt eh?" General of the Royal Palace Guard of the Left, Ansen said, turning with a sharp smile of anticipation to his fellow general, Gyousou. "Although I'll wager you weren't expecting to be part of the entertainment at the celebration thrown in your honor."

"If one must spend a day in useless revelry, at least I will not be bored to tears by it," was the stoic, white-haired general's reply.

"That's typical of you. You're no fun, _governor_ ," Ansen replied, giving him a hearty slap on the back (which failed to stagger him, to the General Ansesn's disappointment). Gyousou shot his fellow general a sour look for his levity.

"You don't take time out to enjoy the finer things in life!" continued the General of the Left, Ansen. "Here we are, a great day ahead of us, surrounded by fine women no less, and you'd rather fuss over the extravagance of the food and drink."

"If the court enjoyed a little less of the "finer things in life" as you say, the treasury would not be currently dwindling down to nothing while we feast, and I would not have been sent to Tetsui to seize taxes from already overworked people."

"Well then," Ansen said with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. "In the province that the king just awarded you with, you're free to run it however you like."

"I intend to," Gyousou replied seriously as he buckled on the fine new blade that he had just been presented with in commemoration for a series of bouts against the Ever-King of En. The commemoration blade had been presented to him during his inauguration as the new governor of Saku Province.

At the West Gate that led to the wide staircase that wound its way down the tall, steep mountain holding the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Tai, Whitejewel Palace, above the Sea of Clouds, there was already a royal retinue mounted up. The King, naturally, was at the head of the line. His generals and his ministers both had tried their best to talk their king out of risking his own safety by coming along on a hunt for an exceedingly dangerous youma, but he would not hear of being left out of the main event at a celebration he was holding.

"With any luck, the beast will have gone to ground for the day and his Majesty will grow tired of looking for it and come back home, and let us do our jobs," Gyousou said with a rare note of optimism.

"Why that sounded almost like you think his Royal Majesty would be more of a hindrance than a help," Ansen said with heavy irony.

Gyousou remained silent to the comment, but it was known among the military that the civilian king was far better suited to his palace pleasures than being out in the wild chasing down demons.

"I think it only a good thing that we're not likely to find anything but the nearest village with a circus like this following behind us," Gyousou finally said when he had taken a moment to really take in the enormity of what his royal majesty considered "absolutely necessary" for when going on a short hunt.

Ansen and Gyousou both would have simply packed their weapons, some dried food rations for later in case they did not find any food in the area, a single change of clothes, and perhaps a tarp to make a shelter with if they could not find one (all of which could be rolled into a bed-roll and tucked on the saddle behind them) and mounted up for the hunt. His Royal Majesty had brought winged scent-dogs (and their handlers three), falcons and their handlers, several persons to carry his weapons and armor, and that was the most _sensible_ of the things he had included for hunting. There were more than three winged beasts loaded down with what looked like a miniature cloth palace; a palace which required a small army of servants to set-up and maintain it, as it came with a portable kitchen to prepare food with (complete with kitchen staff of five). It also came with furniture ( _foldable_ furniture… but nonetheless, furniture).

"A brazier," Gyousou muttered. "He brought a brazier with him."

"That he did," Ansen replied. "And look, it comes with a scullery maid to handle the coal!"

"It is summertime," Gyousou pointed out unnecessarily.

"You never know, there could be a bit of nip in the air," Ansesn grinned.

"The only nip there will be," Gyousou said with belabored patience. "Will be when the drakh we are supposed to be hunting makes snacks of his majesty's supply train. I have outfitted _armies_ with less personnel than this!"

"Disposable decoys?" Ansen suggested cheerfully.

"I will remind you that these civilians are under our protection," Gyousou said flatly.

"Spoilsport."

Gyousou refrained from saying that his comrade's comments could have been considered witty, if Gyousou didn't suspect that his fellow general was partly serious. Ansen, while an effective leader and an excellent strategist, was not known for his vast sympathy for the civilians he was nominally supposed to be protecting.

The newly appointed governor of Saku Province suppressed a sigh at the sight of his king's baggage train and mounted his suuguu, Keito. The beast gave a few restive movements under him either catching on to the tension in the camp, or simply testing her nominal new master's reign over her (she hadn't been tamed for very long). Gyousou checked her adroitly and waited for the signal from his liege to move out.

The winds were fair that day and the party moved along well for one of its size though Gyousou could certainly have moved far more quickly and efficiently to put down the youma if it had just been him and a select few of his men. There were many of his officers in particular that he was grooming for positions in his new administration.

Tai's current king was a deft hand at administration and always had been, but the imperial court was beginning to fray around the edges a bit. Officials were starting to take bribes, and there was evidence that many of the one's closest to the king were ignoring the rules of appointing promising students who had passed their imperial exams to positions within the court bureaucracy, and instead were simply giving court appointments to family members or the children of nobles and officials they wished to curry favors from. In short, the ship of state was beginning to take on water and Gyousou knew that something needed to be done to keep it from sinking entirely. Why not set up the court to run itself during an interregnum? There were plenty of perfectly capable officials from within the ranks that could keep matters in check far more efficiently than most civilians handled the trick.

The cavalcade flew for an hour or two to the place where they had heard the reports of a sighting of the massive youma, and their king ordered a halt to make camp in preparation for actually going on the hunt (probably so he would have a nice toasty tent and some dancing girls to come back to in an hour when he got tired). In the course of his very long and decorated military career, Gyousou Saku had seen countless numbers of military camps put up, there was a particular way that they were all organized to get the maximum efficiency for food preparation and dispersion, mandatory exercise and drill, sleeping accommodations, efficient muster and deploy and waste disposal. Each area was planned to within an inch so that all soldiers would know at all times where his commanding officer was and how to do his assigned camp chores without any hiccups in the efficient setting up and running of a small canvas city.

:Civilians!: Gyousou Saku thought in dismay as he watched the baggage train try to set up a camp for their king.

No-one knew what their assigned functions were or who to ask to get something done and they were all running around like chickens in a yard asking "who's doing this?" and "I thought you were doing that," and "no, don't do that!"

Ansen stood back along the sidelines next to Gyousou watching the temporary court scurry about like ants over an overturned anthill and achieving precisely nothing. After a moment, in a deadpan voice, he asked

"Do you think anyone would notice if I killed a few of them?"

Gyousou gave the question a moment's consideration

"That depends, how many?"

"Maybe a dozen?" he suggested hopefully.

"Oh, I'm sure they'd notice," Gyousou said with a mock sigh of regret.

"How about five?" Ansen replied.

"Go for it."

They shared a chuckle over it and by mutual agreement decided they'd rather just dispense with the "making camp" nonsense and go find the creature themselves.

"We'll just say that we're going to flush it out so his majesty can kill it properly," Ansen said.

"I have no intention of putting our king in peril by letting him face a beast that he is woefully unprepared to defeat," Gyousou said.

"And nor do I, but the _official_ story is that we're only going out to track it down… however, if it should happen to attack us and we wind up killing it in self-defense, why, who is to blame us for that? It is _your_ party, after all."

"And I shall kill if I want to," Gyousou affirmed as a tacit way of sealing their gentleman's agreement to conspire to keep their king from getting his royal self killed.

They bowed at the small open sided pavilion where their liege sat on a pile of embroidered silk cushions while a servant girl massaged his feet. They presented their cover story to the king and were given leave to depart to find the drakh for him.

Rather than fly aimlessly about hoping to catch a glimpse of the beast, the two generals had taken a list of all of the reported sighting and attacks by the creature that had come in and triangulated the sightings on a map to come up with a pretty good idea of just where it was making its lair based on what direction the eye-witnesses saw it flying off to after it had made its attack.

They estimated the creature to be lairing itself somewhere within the foothills (or possibly higher in the mountains) of south-central Tai, just before the mountain range aptly named the Dragon's Teeth. Much of Tai was rocky terrain, but the grey sheer stone crags that jutted up in the south of Tai were particularly sharp and steep, looking very much like fangs of an enormous maw trying to bite into the sky.

"Keep a sharp eye out," Gyousou cautioned his comrade in the hunt just as they mounted. "The Dragon's Teeth are the main stomping grounds of the Foresworn."

"Oh _them_ … are they still around?" Ansen queried in mild interest. "I thought they'd been hunted down and stomped out centuries ago."

"Their numbers are very small," Gyousou answered. "Just enough to be a pain in the side of the local guard units really, but they linger, still, after so many centuries."

"Those are the crazies that still worship the Barbarian God and the Four Guardian Beasts right? The ones who seek to restore the world to the chaos before the Emperor of Heaven reformed the world to the Twelve Kingdoms?"

"I confess I do not see the appeal either, perhaps the system is not always perfect, but it is certainly better than the chaos and corruption of the Ancient Days. Still I suppose there must always be those that are unwilling to see the good in the world as it exists and wish to change things in the hope that the new order will be better."

"I doubt we'll have much trouble from a bunch of skin-wearing savages with crude stone weapons," Anses scoffed. "But as you say I'll keep a lookout, perhaps one of their women will be fine to look at when she's been bathed."

Gyousou refrained from rolling his eyes at his companion's comment and set out for the hunt.

Gyousou and Ansen had just started their search from the sky and were perhaps a third of the way into the foothills leading up to the Teeth when a great shrieking cry that sounded much like the screech of metal being rent apart tore through the air. As one, their heads shot around to scan the direction it came from. Ahead of them, slightly to the left, they heard another cry echo through the sharp jagged clifftops and jutting crags of the mountains below. They signed each other that they would proceed, but cautiously.

They needn't have bothered with caution, for a gap in the clouds in front of them revealed the sight of a great winged beast wheeling its lazy way through the air before them, slightly to the right of where they had thought he would be. The steady beat and glide if its massive wings against the air showed its oddly sinuous grace in the way it moved. The long body, with its long, arching spined neck and tail gave it a slightly serpentine cast as it glided and wheeled with seemingly effortless ease on the thermals of the air. It was surprisingly beautiful to look at, if one could discount the fact that it was capable of wiping out entire villages in a single hour.

Gyousou Saku was not a timid man, but a long moment to take in the sheer enormity of the monster did give him a moments pause to consider. The king had come along on the hunt, instead of leaving it to his armies as usual, because he was the only one who possessed the last shard of the Kings Sword.

Every Kingdom in their world had its own set of special relics; among them was always a sword (or some other weapon) with mystical properties. These celestial weapons, said to be granted by the Emperor of Heaven, existed for the sole purpose of dealing with the youma that cropped up in the world. While a youma could be killed dead enough by most common means (some were more difficult to kill than others) only a King's Sword could disintegrate the youma's spirit and keep its evil from reforming into another fiend. In this particular case, ancient knowledge held that the hide of a drakh could not be pierced by an ordinary weapon, therefore, only a king could kill the rare youma. The problem with that for Tai in particular was that Tai's Royal Sword had been severed in a great battle many centuries ago. Numerous smiths had tried to repair the blade over the years but had found it impossible to meld the pieces back together again. Even had they managed the feat, a King's Sword had magic granted by the Heavens bound into its blade, even if the smith could restore the physical sword, the magic in it was lost. There was one final shard near the hilt that contained a fraction of the sword's old power and it was that piece that the Peace Kings had used to disperse the evil spirits of the youma over the centuries since the blade's sundering. A youma of such legendary size and ferocity as the drakh would need to have its great evil dispersed by the king's shard.

Gyousou was about to sign to Ansen that they should try to circle around and scout to see if there was a way to take it out without having to engage it when Ansen suddenly spurred his mount forward and charged toward the beast head on. Gyousou mentally cursed his comrade's rash and impetuous action even as he motioned his suuguu to move up higher to gain some altitude in order to hopefully effectively cover Ansen as he moved in. While Ansen moved in on the maw of the creature Gyousou drew out his bow and strung it, then nocked an arrow, hoping to get the creature in its mouth before it could burn his foolish comrade into a crisp with the flaming fumes it breathed out.

It was like watching a mouse attack a cat, judging by the relative sizes of Ansen on his own suuguu, and the drakh he was charging at. The drakh beat the air hard with its leathery wings which, now that gyousou saw them more closely, had a faintly opalescent sheen to the overall reddish color of them, it shimmered softly in the light as though dusted lightly with gold and the reddish tone seemed to shift to copper and bronze and back changing by the way the light struck it. The drakh rose slightly, sighting Ansen directly ahead of it and reared its head back a little. Gyousou's brow furrowed a bit in puzzlement, wondering what the beast was going to do next. They received only a few seconds warning, as something that looked like a red jewel hidden behind some sort of membrane on its chest glowed violently to life, flaring up like a brilliant ember. A split second later, the drakh opened its mouth and breathed out a long streamer of golden fire straight at Ansen. The general dodged abruptly out of the way, his beast barrel-rolling to one side. The drakh swooped past Ansen, snapping at him on its way by. Gyousou held his fire, deciding to let the beast concentrate it attention on one target while he man with the height advantage waited for a better opening to line up his shot. The drakh swooped around and Gyousou thought that it intended to chase after the other general, but instead it seemed to loose interest in chasing its prey and wheeled up on a thermal and back toward the teeth of the mountain.

Ansen pulled his kijuu up beside Gyousou and shouted over the whistle of the wind.

"That was a close one, but we know now how it attacks, let's follow it and see where it is making its lair!"

Gyousou nodded his agreement. It would perhaps be wiser to take the beast on the ground, if they attacked from above they had a greater chance of pinning it.

They tailed it, both guiding their kijuu to keep the great youma from realizing that it had two someones who had taken an interest in it. After a long, slow glide the beast came to land in a small pocket valley nestled in between two larger mountain peaks, shielded from view from below by the elevation of the sharply jagged mountains and almost entirely from above by a trick of shadow. Gyousou pulled his kijuu back suddenly and ducked into the cool damp cover of a nearby cloud when he spotted something else besides a drak's lair that was hidden within the little pocket valley. He took cover in time, but his companion, it turned out, was not so lucky.

Ansen, it appeared, was so intent on hunting down the drakh and killing it in order to gain a fame that would be equal to his comrade's (who had just been promoted to governor due to his recent successes) that he had been heedless of the fact that he had swooped perhaps a little too close to the camp below. Gyousou would have been willing to swear up until that point that there would be no possible way for an arrow to be shot from a bow and reach up that far, much less manage to hit its target with such shocking accuracy, but it happened. Ansen was struck on the outside of his right shoulder with force enough to near knock him from his saddle. His kijuu was not so well trained and bucked and jerked beneath him, throwing him further off-balance. Gyousou turned Keito to go to the aid of his comrade when Ansen tipped over the side and fell into the air.

"What the-!" Gyousou murmured to himself in near breathless shock.

One of the primitive buckskin-clad savages from below took a running leap off a nearby cliff then seemed to… _bounce_ on mid-air, leaping higher up in a manner that Gyousou wasn't certain he could credit.

: _Perhaps I hit my head_?: he wondered.

The Repudiate intercepted Ansen's fall. A small whirlwind kicked up from out of no where and surrounded the two of them, letting them down gently on the ground. Gyousou pulled out his bow and reached for an arrow, determined to rescue his friend from his rescuer but realized that the pair of them were out of range. Another wind kicked up, bringing in a deep fog and a cloud of dust. Gyousou was forced to wait until it had cleared, and when it did, Ansen and the Repudiate were no-where to be seen.

: _Trouble_ ,: Gyousou sighed to himself.

He didn't always get along with the General of the Left, and he had some serious doubts about the man's moral integrity sometimes, but the two of them had been through much together, and Gyousou would never abandon a comrade in need.

Gyousou brought Keito in to land behind another spiny mountain top, more like a sharp spire of rock towering into the sky, nearby. The position would give him two advantages; the advantage of height relative to the base camp of his enemies, and cover from below. He should be able to spy on them from above without being detected then sneak in under cover of darkness to rescue his comrade. In the dimming light of the westering sun, Gyousou made his cautious way toward the enemy camp, keeping a wary eye out for traps, possible ambush sites and enemy sentries. An hour later he was within eyeshot of the camp, he found a small niche in between two rocks, hidden from view from below by a strangely verdant screen of shrubbery (in an area that was otherwise entirely bare wind-swept stone).

The camp was a crude affair of seven leather tents circled around a central fire pit with a natural spring of snowmelt water nearby to draw water from. Aside of the foreign nature of the Repudiates garb (all made of animal skins and furs and fastened by crude bone buttons) and the odd ways they painted (and apparently tattooed) their faces, it took Gyousou a long few minutes of observation to figure out what it was that seemed so odd about them. After a while he realized that there was no sign of any material that manufactured by the hands of civilization anywhere within the camp. The weapons they wielded were spears, bows and clubs but no swords made of metal, there were not even any metal knives (which to him seemed really odd) but the knives they used were all made of flint or volcanic glass.

Right next to the fire pit in the center of camp, Ansen was bound hand and foot by leather thongs and bound further to a tall wooden post that was carved with strange animal-like figures. Though he was bound, it surprised Gyousou to notice that they were not mistreating him; in fact, one of the women of the village had brought a dish of food from the nearby firepit over to him and was feeding him and apparently _talking_ to him.

: _It seems as though they are conversing_!: Gyousou realized a moment later when Ansen apparently made a polite reply to something the young woman had said.

: _He had seriously better not be trying to get her out of her clothes_!: Gyousou thought to himself.

It would be just like the man to find himself in a life or death situation, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and taking the time out to try to seduce a comely woman.

The two of them conversed for a long while, and Gyousou decided that he should give his fellow general the benefit of the doubt and figure that he was probing the young woman for weaknesses in the camps defenses so he could escape later, or trying to gain information about the movements of their people so that he could come back with an army and wipe them out for good. Still… something about the way they interacted put Gyousou's back up, he didn't like where it was leading.

He was about to slide back out and go around to circle the camp when the spindly branches of the bushes he had been hiding in for the last few hours suddenly came alive around him! Gyousou found himself inexplicably pinned down by what should have been nothing more than passive vegetation.

"Halt, intruder!" a woman's voice, rough from the smoke of a campfire, resounded strongly in the night air. "We know you're there, and we have known that you have been hiding there for the last many hours. You cannot fool the original owners of the Dragon's Teeth within their home ground, this land has been our and our ancestors from before the sky was sundered and remade."

Gyousou found himself further entangled by the branches of the shrubs around him, as though the trees themselves were fighting him! While he struggled against the greenery, three of the Foresworn tribers surrounded him, two with arrows knocked but undrawn and the third with a long spear of wood. When one of the Foresworn stepped forward and sat on his back, the tree inexplicably stilled and loosened its grip on him. Gyousou could only theorize that the tree was some form of heretofore unknown youma, subdued by these strange, savage people. Gyousou found himself quickly bound by tight leather thongs and force marched into the center of their camp by his captors then bound to the post beside his companion.

"Glad you could join me, some rescue by the way," Ansen said as soon as their captors had finished binding them.

"It's the thought that counts."

"I'll remember you said that when they're feeding you to the drakh then," Ansen replied dryly.

"Is that what they do?" Gyousou asked curiously. "They kidnap innocent villagers from the towns nearby and feed them to their pet youma? Gruesome."

"Not quite," Ansen said. "From what I could gather, they worship the drakh and some of the other, more powerful, youma as sort of "relatives" of their god-spirits. They think that the original Four God-Beasts that guarded the lands in the Ancient Days are still here in some form and that the youma are part of that form. The more powerful the youma, the closer it is to the form of the God-Beast."

"They worship _youma_?" Gyousou said incredulously. "That's crazy."

"Don't be so quick to scoff my friend," Ansen replied. "There is some small grain of truth to their belief. Your previous position didn't grant you sight of it, but look over to your left."

Curious, Gyousou did so and saw something carved into the side of the mountain. It was a small rounded niche with strange pictures carved into it. Directly to the fore of the niche was a large stone pedestal raised to about waist high on an average man. There was something on top of the pedestal, but Gyousou couldn't quite decide what it was his eyes were looking at. The closest he could come was a glassy stone that was carved into a multisided orb-like shape, with strange sigils carved into all of the sides and inlaid with some thing that gleamed softly in the moonlight. He noticed, to his mystification, that there seemed to be a number of sigils missing from it and then realized that the facets of the multisided stone were actually comprised of many smaller stones, each with a sigil on it, fused together somehow.

"What is that thing?" Gyousou asked curiously.

"That…" Ansen said. "Is a very good question."

"Whatever it is, if the Repudiates hold it in high regard, it can't be good."

"How do you know that? You've never even talked to one of them."

"I've had contact enough with them when I served to the south and west of here," Gyousou replied shortly. "Repudiates once raided a village that my king had sent me and my men to guard when I was still a lieutenant under Captain Banlai. They nearly wiped the whole place out; burned down every structure they could fire their flaming arrows into, took whatever food and supplies they could grab and murdered any of the villagers who stood against their attack. They have every opportunity to live peacefully and they choose not to. They are bandits no matter their beliefs; one who murders the innocent for their gods is no different to me than one who does the same for simple greed."

A young woman dressed in the same, slightly crude leathers, as the rest of the people in the village paused at Gyousou words and walked over.

"I think you should have kept your mouth shut," Ansen muttered to him. "You may find you live longer."

"There is a difference between a captive and a prisoner," Gyousou replied. "A captive knows he bides but for a time and remains true to his own integrity no matter what enemy he faces, a prisoner bows to the power above him to save his skin at the cost of his pride."

"Better a live prisoner than a dead captive I say, the prisoner always has a chance to get away, but the fool who opens his mouth and provokes his enemies will not live to fight another day."

"You speak bravely, white-haired one," the young woman said crouching down so she could get a closer look at him.

She was a youth, perhaps in her early twenties, slight and thin, with the wiry whipcord strength that came from a life of constant activity. Her movements also spoke of a certain amount of training in fighting, but there was an odd cast to her expression, the way she positioned herself, as if she were able to move about in perfect synchronicity with her surroundings. Her face had a sort of fae look to it, like she saw more deeply into the world than he was able to.

"And not entirely without truth," she admitted. "I will not lie and say that our people have never committed any wrongs on our path to bring the world back into the proper order. But let me ask you this… if the will of Heaven is so all encompassing, how is it possible that there are those which fall outside of it? I will tell you. It is because the world has fallen out of balance and remained out of balance for many centuries and _that_ is because the Emperor of Heaven rules over this world. The very fact that the Emperor of Heaven wields so much power in the world goes against the True Balance. Our world has swung too far onto the side of Light, with the Emperor of Heaven arranging every detail as he sees fit, there will be an equal and opposing reaction to this imbalance someday. If matters are not put right the world will one day be consumed by darkness. The world has fallen out of True, and the True Balance must be restored, or all will be lost when the pendulum reverses its swing."

"So… you believe that… your actions are in the best interests of the world? That by sowing chaos and destruction, you're saving us?" Gyousou said in disbelief.

The young woman nodded earnestly, clearly believing with all of her being everything she was telling them.

"It is to prevent a greater catastrophe in the future that we must act now," she said, the light of fanaticism shining in her eyes. "We are not deliberately malicious, not those of us who are true believers anyway, but we cannot let anyone stand in the path of our quest to recover the key to restoring the balance that was lost. The True Balance."

"And for that you attack villages that are all but defenseless and murder people who have never offered you any harm?"

"Whether they know it or not, they were all sheltering a piece of the key. We need all of the pieces to fulfill our mission. So, while it is regrettable that they had to suffer, we cannot allow anything to stand in our way. They may never thank us, but that does not matter, once the True Balance is restored we will be content to know that the world is in our debt."

"You are all of you mad," Gyousou felt compelled to point out.

"It is alright if that is what you wish to think," the Repudiate woman said.

"How does your worship of the drakh fit into your beliefs about restoring the True Balance?" Ansen asked quickly, as if to head off any possible anger on the part of their enemy by plying her with a subject she was obviously deeply enamored with.

"The youma are outside of the Will of Heaven and can only be pulled into the light by a Kirin when it subdues one as one of its Shirei. This world, as it was originally laid out had four God-beasts at the cardinal directions, each in command of an element, each equal to the others, comprised equally of parts of darkness and parts of light, parts of order and parts of chaos, parts of law and parts of revolution. It is said that the Emperor defeated the original Balance of the world and imposed his own order, made of Law, and enforced it by those _he_ selected and put into place. He continues to uphold his view of perfection, staving off the parts of the world he dislikes by enforcing his own will through the puppets he has put into place, the king and the kirin. That is why the youma gather when the king loses the Way, they sense an opportunity to restore the True Balance and they hope to end the cycle of imposition by bringing down the false reign in its infancy. The more powerful the youma is, the harder it is to pull it into the light and the greater resistance it has to the false system put into place by an emperor who has overreached his office. Our reverence for the drakh is symbolic of our opposition to the False Balance and our will to fight the false order the Emperor of Heaven has imposed upon the world."

Gyousou could do nothing more than stare in shock mixed with pity for the poor deluded child, and note with a faint ironic feeling that she actually seemed to feel the same thing about him. She left a small wooden plate full of boiled mashed tuber nearby and went off to attend to some other camp duty.

"We're surrounded by lunatics. You know this, right?" he managed at last.

"What do you think that thing on their altar is, and why do they revere it so, I wonder," Ansen mused aloud, ignoring Gyousou's observation.

"I, for one, do not intend to hang about and find out," Gyousou replied.

"Come now, you can't tell me that you aren't at least a _little_ curious to know about what it is that they've spent so much time and energy gathering together over the years?"

"Not in the least and you shouldn't be either. Recall that they revere youma. _Youma_! For all we know they intend to express their reverence for the youma by offering us to it for dinner."

"I would more accurately say breakfast, considering that it seems to be well past dinner time."

"Well then let us be out of here before they decide to make it a midnight snack."

Any luxury of planning an escape that the Generals might have had was cut short when the camp all suddenly gathered together around the central fires and started beating their skin drums. Four figures wearing elaborately beaded feathered animal skin costumes with large, carved wood masks, and bearing a long rod with a strange glowing crystal at the top, stood in a ring around the fire each at a cardinal point. In the center of each of their intricately carved wooden mask-headdress was a rough gemstone that seemed to glow slightly with its own light. One figure wore green, another wore red, a third blue, and the last white. The drums beat slowly at first and the four figures moved through some slow ritual-like movements. The odd thing was that Gyousou could have sworn that the wind, which had been blowing in the opposite direction all day, stilled and began to gather around the figure in white, whirling in a small dust devil at the dancer's feet. A strange mist gathered wetly and the ground seemed to thump in rhythm of the dancer's feet, like a heartbeat Gyousou could feel through the soles of his feet. The fire in the center of the camp flared and climbed higher, urged on perhaps by the wind. Ansen watched the movements of the tribers with intense curiosity. Gyousou tried to ignore the strange shiver that ran up his back when the air around him abruptly felt thick, like the calm before a storm. The dancers moved through their mysterious pattern and came to a halt, arms upraised as if in entreaty at a last, emphatic thump of the drums.

"Hear us, Ye guardians of the True Balance," one Foresworn priest called out into the night. "We offer to you the flesh of these invading non-believers. Consume their spirits and grow stronger for the day when we unlock the Gate to the Palace of Heaven and storm the Usurper Emperor's citadel and restore the world to its true form!"

"That can't be good," Ansen muttered.

Indeed, not a moment later, the skin-clad warriors grouped together and descended on the two of them, expediently picking them up by the pole they had been bound back to back to, and carried them off to a bare, rocky cliff. The flat floor of the cliff face was littered with bones recognizable as belonging to humans, and even if the two Generals had not recognized the shape of the skulls, the armor and weapons (belonging to the soldiers of the Kingdom of Tai) would have given it away.

"Grow strong on the blood and souls of your enemies, Great Ones!" the leader of the Repudiates entreated a youma that Gyousou could neither hear nor see just then.

The pole that the two of them were bound to was stuck into the middle of a cairn of stones and more rocks were piled up around it to keep the base in place. Gyousou looked around and saw a large number of burned stumps sticking out of other cairns of stones. Clearly this was not the first time this had happened. With a final staccato beating of the skin drums, sounding a little more like a summoning to feast in Gyousou's ears, the tribe quit the area without a backward glance, leaving their "god" to its meal.

One did not become a General of the palace guard by shuffling papers. The two Generals were seasoned fighters, both of them having seen their share of battles and difficult situations. By mutual concordance the two of them immediately began to try to pull the pole out of the cairn by using their backs and legs as leverage. It was no good, though the pole should have slid out easily from the rocks, it was as if it had some how become fused with the stone and would not budge and inch. Likewise when they tried to wriggle it from side to side and loosen or break it that way.

"Now what?" Ansen muttered when they took a small break from their exertions to try to figure out another way to get out of their bind.

"Loosen the cords," Gyousou suggested readily.

"No good," Ansen said a moment later. "I tried it earlier as well. They wet the cords down when they bound us, the knots and bindings only tighten as the cord dries out."

"Well," Gyousou said with philosophic stoicism. "If we are not eaten by the drakh, then we shall suffocate when these bindings finish drying out."

Already the cords had constricted to painful tightness, like great pythons smothering their prey.

"I just love how you're always so cheerful and full of good news," Ansen replied.

Gyousou did not dignify the observation with a response, but instead tried to wriggle the bindings looser.

"Will you stop that?" Ansen snapped. "Every time you move, it gets tighter and I can barely breathe as it is."

Gyousou tried to heave a sigh, but barely managed a short puff.

"If you have another way out of this, I'm open to suggestions," he gritted.

"Relax, I got this one," Ansen said.

Gyousou restrained a glare since the intended recipient was tied behind him and wouldn't be able to appreciate it. The moon rose a quarter of the way into the sky when there was a very soft, slight rustle of movement to their right. It appeared as though the woman stepped out of the shadows themselves, she had not been there, and then when he looked again, there she was.

"Are you unharmed?" she asked.

It was not the haughty woman who had spoken to them earlier about the True Balance and their fanatics dream of remaking the world (and not allowing anything to stand in their way while they did so). Instead this was a woman much younger than the tribe's leader, perhaps about fourteen or fifteen. She had fed the Ansen his dinner earlier.

"Cutting things a little close here sweetheart," Ansen said smoothly.

The woman, well, _girl_ really, took out a rough stone knife and sawed through their damp bindings. Gyousou was relieved to take a deep breath as the cords slid free from around them.

"Remember your promise, warrior," the girl said to Ansen as she slit the cords binding his wrists and ankles as well. "I will bring myself and the others to the base of the mountain after you are done here."

"My friend and I will be sure you're treated fairly," Ansen assured her. "Any advice on how to kill that thing?"

"The god-beast has no weaknesses, its hide is made of armor, its talons are sharp enough to claw into stone, and its teeth can bite through the trunk of a tree… _and_ it breathes flame. If all this were not enough, it flies, I wonder how you propose to defeat it."

"Oh, I'll think of something," Ansen said breezily. "Thanks for the help woman, and ah…" Ansen leered over at her. "I'll be seeing you around."

Gyousou rolled his eyes and force-marched his womanizing fellow general off in the opposite direction of the enemy camp as the Foresworn-girl melded back into the shadows.

"What exactly did you promise her?" Gyousou demanded once he was reasonably sure the girl was out of earshot.

"Seems that not everything is as utopian as it seems here in Fanatic's Paradise,"Ansen said by way of reply. "Turns out that there's some sort of ritual offering to the god-beast every year…"

"You mean… like an actual virgin sacrifice?" Gyousou said incredulously.

"Sort of. The way I understand it, the "offerings" usually volunteer because the ones that come back have some sort of great power bestowed on them. Those are the ones who become the "Chosen Ones" which seem to be the elite warriors in their society. Everyone thinks they have some kind of special power granted by the god-beast."

"Hmmm…" Gyousou said dubiously.

On the surface it sounded like the crazed ramblings of a cult of lunatics, but even as he prepared to dismiss it as such his mind played back to some of the odd happenings that he had witnessed earlier that day, events and actions that did not have any real plausible explanation otherwise.

"Well it turns out that not every person who offers themselves to the god beast comes back covered in glory. There are some who simply disappear. That girl's older sister was one of them, she and some of the other young children of the tribe are scared stiff that the drakh is gonna eat them instead of Choose them. She asked me for asylum for herself and the other littles that will follow her in exchange for her help getting free."

"If it is for those who are not yet of age to decide their own fate by Law, then it is certainly within allowable limits to move to protect the innocent," Gyousou replied with grudging approval.

Technically, Ansen had made a deal with the enemy. However, a minor, especially one held essentially under duress, was not subject to reprisal as an adult was.

"Oh, and I told them that we'd kill the drakh too," Ansen added.

"That is what we came for," Gyousou agreed as though it went without saying.

Ansen looked over at his fellow General as though he had lost his mind, while Gyousou checked on the sword that the girl had procured for him.

"You're planning on sticking around?" he said incredulously.

"Weren't you?" Gyousou inquired.

"No way in hell!" he shot back. "I was going to go back and gather my troops, arrest the village, sort them out and then muster the elites to come help me kill this thing. That's the only sensible way to destroy a drakh, especially one that has grown to this size and power by feasting on virgin flesh."

"You would turn your back and run away," Gyousou said with distaste.

"I'd strategically regroup," Ansen corrected. "Your pride alone will not kill that thing Saku. Be sensible about it."

"I will keep the beast distracted while you bring the army," Gyousou compromised. "If we loose this opportunity to beard the beast out here in the relative open while it has its energies concentrated on coming after me, we will only have to fight it again at a later time on its home ground and at a time when it can focus its full attention on destroying its enemies."

"I'll bring the armies, but you are a fool to remain behind," Ansen replied as he struck off in the opposite direction toward a path that would lead him down the mountain.

Gyousou did not reply to his fellow general's assertions but prepared himself for the fight ahead by examining the terrain around him. The cliff face that Gyousou and Ansen had been left tied out for the drakh's dinner on was mostly flat bare stone, but there were spots that would offer him cover; boulders and rock-formations jutting up out from the stone around him would form natural defense barriers to protect him from attack.

Littered in among the armor and bones of the drakh's former suppers were some weapons; spears, mostly, or swords, but Gyousou also saw the curved forms of bows and several partially filled quivers of arrows. One of the bow shafts was broken, and the other had no string, but that was easily taken care of by switching one from the other.

The general was just then beginning to form at strategy to harry the flying menace when the distant sound of a screech warned him of the impending presence of his quarry.

The thought of hunting the creature, taking him by surprise in the daylight from the back of his kijyuu (giving Gyousou the advantages of speed and mobility on the aerial battlefield) had been daunting enough… taking on the beast at night, when Gyousou's sight was limited to what was revealed by the light of the three-quarter-full moon, and on the ground (placing him at a distinct disadvantage when dealing with a flying youma who had a long-range attack) made even Gyousou pause to wonder if perhaps his fellow General had not been partly in the right to call him a fool.

: _It **must** have a weakness_ ,: Gyousou reasoned to himself. : _Everything has a weakness. It's simply a matter of figuring out what it is, and staying alive until I can discover it._ :

Blotting out the stars and much of the light of the moon, the drakh was a contrast of dark shadow and pale moonglow against the larger back drop of the night as it glided in lazily for its meal. It hovered for a moment at the edge of the cliff-face, clearly looking for the usual set up it had become accustomed to when summoned to feed.

The drakh was _huge_. It had looked sizable when viewed from a distance and from the back of a kijyuu, but up close enough to hear the bellow-like rasp of its breath, the scraping sound of its claws on the stone as it landed on the cliff face, it seemed impossibly large.

: _I've seen boats that transport cargo that are smaller than that thing_!: Gyousou thought to himself revising his rough strategy and discarding three of his alternate plans as being unfeasible in the current situation.

Before he could overthink and second guess himself, Gyousou ran out of the place where he had been hiding himself. As he ran to the next spot of cover he had picked out, Gyousou pulled back the arrow he had readied and sent it whistling toward the drakh. It hit solidly on the flank of the beast and had no discernible impact whatsoever, except, of course, to make the drakh take a sudden interest in its next prospective meal. Gyousou ducked behind the cover just as there came a whooshing gust of furnace heat. The flames curled around him and licked at the edges of his hiding place, but the general remained relatively safe in the lee-shadow of the stone.

The air seemed to pound like a massive drum as the drakh leaped and pushed itself back into the sky, swooping around in the air nearby, intent on trying to incinerate its prey from a different angle. As soon as Gyousou had a clear venue, he lined up another shot as he pelted furiously for his next cover. The arrow hit this time on the underside of the drakh, but still had no effect. Unlike a snake or a lizard which had a relatively vulnerable underbelly, the drakh was armored underneath as well.

: _But that makes sense since it is an aerial creature, much of its prey and most fellow-predators will attack it from beneath_ :.

Another blast of furnace heat licked the stone as Gyousou hunkered down within its protection. The sound of beating wings thundered nearby and he was forced to clap his ears to protect them from the sound of the drakh's screech of frustration as its prey eluded it once again. In reply, Gyousou popped around the side of the rock, took aim once again and fired another shot to probe his enemy for possible weak points. The arrow hit the beast on its long, sinuous neck and the drakh didn't even seem to notice it had been hit.

Gyousou noticed for the second time the clear membranous cavity in the direct center of the drakh's chest, right where the sternum would be on a man. It held a strange light, that flared brighter than an ember form a fire as the beast took a deep breath and let out a long stream of fire at the cairn of boulders Gyousou had sheltered himself behind. When Gyousou looked back at the creature the spot in its chest was dim as it beat the air with its wings to gain altitude.

: _That spot in it's chest, it flares up whenever the beast breathes its flames_!: Gyousou realized intuitively.

Hopeful now, the general hunkered down in behind the boulders again and watched the dark night sky for signs of enemy movement. The attack came almost without warning the next time. The drakh swooped down from above in near silence, breathing a large fountain of red fire at the place where Gyousou hid. Only a quick scramble and roll saved him from incineration, but even as he tucked and ducked into the shadows of a nearby cairn, he came to his knees, pulled an arrow back and fired directly at the glowing red target as the beast swooped by for another pass.

"Hah!" Gyousou couldn't help but exult as his shot hit directly where he'd aimed it. But his exultation was short-lived for the arrow bounced off from the armor protecting the glowing thing in its chest as if it were bouncing off armor. The wind of the drakh landing on the stone nearby kicked up dust, even as the tremor of impact made Gyousou, already on his knees, stagger slightly to steady himself against the reassuring solidity of the rock.

: _So, the glowing red thing is not a vulnerable point then_ ,: he thought in disappointment.

Of course it couldn't be _that_ easy.

: _But there's more than one way to skin a rat_ ,: Gyousou thought.

He put his fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle to catch the beasts attention. It snapped its head over to look at him, then reared back, taking a breath. The stone in its chest lit up a brilliant sunset-red as the drakh's neck extended to create a path of fire through the air. Gyousou ran directly at its face, turning at the last minute to race up a nearby cairn of boulders, the very same ones that he and Ansen had been tied to, which still had not only the pole sticking out of it, but the long length of leather cord bindings that had been used to restrain the two generals. Gyousou picked up one weighted end in passing whirling it quickly at his side and sending it snaking out in front of him as he threw himself directly at the long, triangular snout. He leaped off the top of the boulder and came down directly on top of the maw of the beast, landing astride it as though it were nothing more dangerous than a moving kijuu. The length of cord wound around the closed maw of the beast like a tether around a pole, snapping it shut and securing it that way.

The drakh whipped its head from side to side while Gyousou clung like a tick. He cross drew his sword from its sheath over his shoulder, reversed its grip and stabbed at one reddish-gold slit-pupiled eye. His stab struck home, finally having found a vulnerable point it slid cleanly into the naked flesh of the eye. Gyousou pulled out his blade and prepared to make a deeper thrust, hopefully all the way to the brain. Again his slight victory was short-lived. He had blinded the creature yes, but only in one eye. The beast, enraged with pain, gave a particularly sharp jerk of its head and flung Gyousou easily off his precarious perch. He was airborne just long enough to sheathe his blade and tuck into a ball and roll. Fortunately the beasts own injury distracted it from its quarry long enough for Gyousou to recover himself and find as new hiding spot.

: _Congratulations General_ ,: he thought grimly to himself. : _You've only just pissed it off_.:

Still as he watched the beast continue to jerk its head back and forth, clearly trying to shake off the bindings which, for a miracle, were staying in place and continuing to hold, Gyousou rearranged a new strategy as he saw the creature desperately begin to snuffle air in through its nostrils.

: _It cannot attack by flame, yes, but… it also cannot breathe well either_!: He realized with a dawning sense of elation as a new strategy occurred to him with the blinding speed that only seemed to come in the heat of battle.

If he could find a way to cut off its air completely, the creature would suffocate!

: _Weapons cannot pierce it's hide, but one need not land a piercing blow in order to crush its windpipe_!:

All he needed was something heavy enough to—

He cast quickly about, looking for something large and heavy that he could maneuver to either crush its snout or collapse its windpipe somehow.

There were cairns of large rocks about the size suitable for launching with a catapult but he had no such contraption right then, nor the time or means to make one, not even a crude one, what with an enraged predator circling overhead. There were large boulders as well, some of them were several times bigger than a wagon, but those did him no good as they were far too heavy for him alone to lift. It was as he watched the dragon swoop down from above, over the tops of the few remaining poles lodged into the cairns that Gyousou got an idea.

: _If I cannot throw something at it of sufficient weight to defeat its great size and strength and crush its windpipe, then I will simply have to use its own size and strength against it_.:

Gyousou took a few more moments to study the creature. The thing binding its mouth closed had distracted and disoriented it, yes, but it would not last forever. Sooner or later the cord would give way and the beast would be able to breathe fire again, and Gyousou would be right back where he had started.

The sky began to lighten into twilight heralding the dawn and Gyousou finished with his plan. If he maneuvered himself correctly then he could use the light of the rising sun to blind his opponent during a critical moment. Timing would be everything.

Gyousou continued to move from cover to cover, firing off arrows at any place that looked like it might be remotely vulnerable. His arrows never pierced the armor of the beasts hide, but they did have the effect of making an already frustrated enemy even angrier and more disturbed. The battle was turning to Gyousou's favor, if he could keep managing things, he might make it out of the encounter alive. In the course of one of his dodges, he picked up a small, light round shield made of iron and hurriedly polished the surface of it when he ducked into the lee of another cairn of stones to evade the drakh's frustrated tail-swings and claw-swipes. He kept a weather eye on the eastern horizon even as he harried his foe from different positions with his arrows, frustrating and enraging the beast further. Wiping the shield sporadically and using the sand-like dust as an abrasive, Gyousou managed to polish the shield back to a mirror-like finish.

: _This must be aimed just right_ …: he thought as she quickly scaled a large cairn of stones in just the right direction, at the position between four'o clock and five o'clock relative to the post that he and Ansen had been tied to. That post was the tallest of them all, the others had been burned down to mere stumps by previous drakh-feedings. Gyousou stuck the shield in between two stones and tilted it until it had reached the exact position he wanted it in then left it wedged in place.

: _All that's left is to keep it busy and angry until the time is right to strike_!:

The sky slowly lightened from grey to pink and at last to orange as the golden disk of the sun rose slowly up over the horizon. Gyousou stopped harrying the beast for a long moment and waited for it to take off from the ground and gain some altitude for a greater dive. That was when he stepped out into the open, standing vulnerably in the exact place he had marked out for himself, with an arrow nocked and two more waiting. The General of the Right gave a great shrill whistle to attract the drakh's attention. The creature, enraged past all sense by the constant harrying of its intended prey, dove directly towards him. At that moment the cord binding its great maw snapped and the beast freed its jaws to rain fire down on the warrior. Gyousou Saku stood his ground, not so much as twitching a muscle.

The drakh sped towards him from out of the wind with all the implacable fury of a storm, jaws opened wide to consume him in one bite. Still he held his position and did not move. It came closer, thirty feet, twenty… Gyousou drew back his arrow, waited, counting to three, and let fly, directly for the hole of its gaping maw.

At the exact moment that the arrow pierced the vulnerable flesh at the back of the creature's throat, there was a flash of light as the rising sun reflected off the polished shield that gyousou had put into place behind him. The creature was blinded and did not adjust its flight-path for the sacrifce-pole lodged into the ground in front of Gyousou sticking up at the sky like a massive spear. Forced forward by its own momentum, the drakh careened right into the up-jutting stake which acted as a spear, thrusting right into its throat. The crude weapon did not pierce the great beast's flesh, but it did not need to. The force of the blow crushed its windpipe, and after many long moments of flailing about, the drakh slowly expired of suffocation.

Just to be safe, Gyousou took a glaive from a nearby dead soldier and expediently shoved it through the creature's right eye all the way until it reached the brain. Even if it had somehow survived its suffocation… it was dead _now_.

: _Well, that's done_ ,: Gyousou thought with satisfaction at the completion of his task as he turned away to go and see about managing the situation with the Foresworn.

He needn't have bothered however, Gyousou had not managed to get three paces from the site of his first fallen prey when the dawnlight revealed the sight of several hundred warriors of the Imperial Army, in the sky on the backs of their Kijyuu, swooping toward the small Foresworn camp nestled in the valley below him. Gyousou watched as they all made short work of rounding up the village, felling those who resisted, and imprisoning the rest to be sorted out at trial. He sighed a bit with regret that he would not be joining that battle. The sun was not far over the horizon when another troop, this one formed in strict formation and flying the Imperial flag of Tai, landed on the ledge where Gyousou had just felled the drakh.

His Liege, the Emperor of Tai dismounted from his own Kijyuu, and Gyousou knelt to him in proper obeisance.

"My, my General," The Emperor said in tones that were amused and not displeased. "I send you out to locate a drakh for me to slay and you not only find a nest of Foresworn, but you manage to slay the drakh yourself without the use of a my Celestial Relic."

"It was not my intention to go against your majesty's orders," Gyousou lied, because really, it sort of _had_ been his intention all along to slay the beast.

"Well if that's how it is, I suppose I will overlook your impudence in stealing my prey. Well done General. I see now that I definitely leave Saku Province in capable hands."

Just at that point General Ansen of the Left landed and made obeisance to his emperor.

"Your majesty, the Foresworn have been secured and the village cleaned out. The people await your justice."

"If I must, I must," His Majesty said heaving a put upon sigh. "And General… well done, I will send a congratulations gift of ten thousand bushels of rice from the Imperial Stores to your Province as a commendation for your bravery and the greatness of your deed. Truly you have saved me a great deal of trouble this day."

"It is ever my wish to be of service to my land and people. There is one favor I would ask your majesty."

"Name it," the King said indulgently.

"However wrong and misguided they are, the Foresworn are still people of Tai. Punish the adults and soldiers as the Kingdom's Law befits them, but let their children, who are innocent of any wrongdoing so far, be treated with kindness and compassion. If you give them to homes that will foster them and raise them properly, I believe they will grow to be proper citizens of Tai."

"You suggestion is everything I have come to expect of you General Saku, I shall grant your request."

"Your Majesty is most gracious," Gyousou bowed his head in gratitude.

"I stand amazed as ever, general," Ansen said after the king had remounted his kijyuu to go administer his justice further down the mountain. "We finally manage to get the jump on a Foresworn settlement and you want to turn them all into upstanding citizens. Mark my words, those kids will grow up with grudges against the Realm and placed in positions where they can spy for the rest of them."

"And you mark mine, they've had little enough of real warmth and comfort here. Raised in a town by people who will look out for them, they will open their hearts in time and come to accept that Law and Righteousness are bestowed by Heaven."

Then Ansen's eye fell to the form of the dead drakh arrayed out behind Gyousou where it had fallen and Gyousou was treated to the sight of the General of the Left being truly surprised.

"It seems you have left me no sport General Saku," he said after he got over his visible surprise. "And here I had thought I would be the one to come to your aid."

"My apologies for ruining your morning," Gyousou replied with dry courtesy.

"Well, you certainly know how to garner attention Saku, I'll give you that. I'll wager that word of your having defeated a drakh like some heroe out of legend will spread far and wide like the rest of the tales of your deeds."

"I was only doing my duty to Tai and its people. And other man would do the same."

"You know it sometimes amazes me that you don't ever seem to recognize just what kind of man you are, and how great your fame has grown. I guess it's true what they say… a tiger never sees its own stripes."

Gyousou had nothing to say to that so he simply mounted his own kijyuu and went to attend to his next duty.

The remainder of the morning was spent attending to the aftermath of the battle, and it wasn't until later on, as Gyousou was leading his own troops back to the palace, that he realized what strange thing had been bothering him since he and the Imperial Presence had left the mountainside. The strange relic that was held by the Foresworn in their village had seemingly _disappeared_. When he looked back though the reports that had been submitted to the Palace Archives, only his own report had mentioned the artifact. There was no record of it in Ansen's report, nor of the reports of any of his subordinates. He had thought it a bit _odd_ , but with everything else that went on after he had taken command of his own province and later moved to shore up the Imperial Court, the minor matter of the Foresworn relic simply slipped his mind.

End Interlude.


	5. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 4

Yuka tried to recover her senses, but her scattered wits wouldn't coalesce into anything she recognized as a meaningful pattern right away. She lay there on the pebbly beach, frigid waves lapped at her feet and her whole body felt tired. Passing through the void always left her feeling like every speck of her existence had been pulled in ten different directions and then reassembled with everything slightly to the left of where it had been before. She could make out the gentle shush of waves crashing into shore and the creelings of nearby seabirds but that was all her befogged mind could make sense of and even those details weren't helpful to her in her current state.

: _Wait, Taiki_!: she thought frantically, her scattered wits at last pulling together in an instant of panicked urgency. She had brought her friend across the void so he was her responsibility. Kaname wouldn't have anyone else to look after him!

Yuka managed to force herself to face upwards and sat up, looking around for her friend. She found him a handsbreadth away from her, still asleep on the beach.

: _Thank goodness, he seems to have made it through okay_ ,: she thought, overcome with an unexpected wave of relief.

She checked her person and found that both of the bag she'd packed was fully intact, to her vast relief. At least they'd have some helpful articles to help them, though now that she was here, she wasn't sure exactly what their next move should be. Kaname was still unconscious from the journey, so her first worry was going to have to be him, other matters could just wait for now.

: _I can't leave him alone while he's unconscious, but likewise I don't know if it's a very good idea for us to stay out in the open for very long either_.:

This wasn't her first trip to the rodeo after all, and she knew from her last visit that there were places in the Other World that captured and executed "kaikyaku" as her kind were called over here, on sight. If she was in the Kingdom of Sou, they might be in trouble.

: _We might be in trouble anyway_ ,: Yuka thought. :I don't know what all caused Kaname to return to the other world when he's supposed to be ruling his kingdom beside his king but my instincts tell me that if all were truly well in his home kingdom he would be there at his kings side.:

In addition to that, she had heard some things, both serving under the king of Kou and her breif time alongside Youko with the King of En. Tai was not in a very good state at all. There were supposedly youma running rampant through the countriside and no-one knew where the king was. That was all she had really heard.

Her stomach and spine began to get that familiar knotted feeling in it. It was a feeling that had nagged her throughout most of her previous stay in this place, it was a feeling that came from a heinous cocktail of worries all mixed together; not knowing where she was, not really being sure of where she should go, not really knowing what to do, certainly not knowing where her next meal was coming from (she'd brought some supplies. but those wouldn't last long) not having a place to sleep, not knowing if travel along the roads would end up with her being attacked by bandits, or worse. There were a lot of things she had to worry about, and she wondered what in the world had ever possessed her to want to take on this burden again.

: _Because_ ,: she realized, looking down into the sleeping face of her friend, Kaname the Kirin of Tai. : _I couldn't just leave him to face it all alone._ :

She had felt it was her duty to return the kirin of Tai to the world he belonged in so that he could... do whatever it was he was meant to do over here. Even though it was her duty, she hadn't liked the idea of sending her friend Kaname into a strange world all alone and friendless, with no-one to protect him and look out for him.

:I might not be much, but I still have some skill with a sword, after all the hinma trained my muscle memory and that is something that does not fade so easily. I can kill youma if nothing else. And even if I'm not really heroine material, I have it in me to be a loyal friend, I'm sure.:

Kaname was so sweet and harmless. He believed the best of everyone, even Yuka. He had said clearly that he had been happy here, and Yuka wanted him to be happy again. It felt a bit strange for her to want someone else's happiness more than her own, but at the same time she couldn't deny that it felt natural for her to want that.

Yuka stopped her minds frantic buzzing for a moment to enjoy the sunrise over the ocean. It was a beautiful one, blazing reds and golds and orange and pink across the sky. Looking at the area around her, there was the ocean before her but behind and all around her it seemed, majestic mountains, some of them still with snow on them jutted stonily up into the sky. The air of the place they'd landed in was noticeably colder than some of the kingdoms she had been in, and yet there was a wild sweetness to it that made her brethe it in deeply, certain she'd never smelled anyplace that had such a lovely scent to it. She couldn't see much of the land that surrounded her, the forrest was too dense, but it looked like an untamed northern wilderness.

: _First things first_ ,: Yuka thought as she sat up and positioned Kaname Taiki's head more comfortably on her lap so he wouldn't accidentally breathe in the sand and choke. : _We need to find out where exactly we are._ :

If they were in Sou, they'd better start making their way northward in a hurry and avoid the roads and other travelers for a while. She wouldn't want to meet up with anyone who would load her and her friend in a wagon and take them to the nearest village to be executed.

: _And aside of finding out where we are, we need to find out more about the situation, then we can make a plan_ ,: Yuka thought. Already she felt the smothering cloak of responsibility squeezing in around her shoulders, it had been frightening enough when she was fifteen and a victim of circumstance, but after a pause to take her own measure, she found that she was not feeling the same way about it now as she had felt about it then.

: _I wonder why that is_ ,: she pondered to herself.

An internal flash of all of the hours she had spent at the nearby gym/training center in her neighborhood, training on her own and with her teacher in the ways of escrima flashed into her mind. Experience could be a powerful goad, as Yuka quickly learned. Remembering how powerless she had felt without the strength or ability to defend herself from an attack had made a deep impression on her. She had silently vowed to herself that she would never again be caught out so helpless, and when she returned she sought training and trained herself rigorously, trying to learn as much as possible as quickly as feasible. She never wanted to feel helpless again. She had already been an athletic sort, but when Yuka turned her mind and will to mastering something her body quickly fell in line. The fact that she practiced at every chance she got went a long way towards her tutalage.

Yuka had learned the basics of the art of the sword in the Other Wolrd, but she didn't have very many good associations with it, besides that, logic told her that she would not always have a sword handy and she should focus her efforts on studying a weapon that she would be able to find and use no matter where she went. The local fitness center had an instructor who taght escrima, it was a fighting style from the Philipines that used two sticks as the weapons, and the rest was all how the fighter moved. It relied on speed and maneuverability, and a great deal of defensive hand maneuvers. Yuka felt that it would be perfect for her and after a week, found that she had been right. A year later, she was in the first row. Always in the back of her mind had been the times in this world when she wished she had known how to do something.

She should check the supplies she'd packed, just in case, and lay out all of the things that had gotten wet so that they could dry in the sun. Suiting thought to action, she dragged Kaname further up onto the beach and, deciding that it would probably be good to have something for the both of them to warm up by, walked up and down the beach nearby collecting driftwood and dried out seaweed, this she deposited into a pile and stacked in the pyramid shape she'd seen on camping survival instruction dvd's she'd rented (Yuka had never once been camping in her world) and filled the center with smaller stuff that would hopefully catch. She had a heck of a time getting the dried out seaweed and damped paper to catch fire, first she had to figure out how to block the wind with her body then she had to get the stubborn stuff to hold a flame, she almost gave up and used the extra lighter fluid on it! Only the thought that they might need it more urgently later stopped her. It felt like forever when the wood proper at last began to take and a proper fire licked around the lager sticks and started to travel onto the log-ish-sized ones she'd dragged over and broke off.

It seemed so simple, but having a fire to warm her up did cheer her up and make her feel accomplished. She'd never managed to that the last time she'd been in this world, maybe she could do this after all! Yuka took out all of the things she'd packed away in both travel packs and lined them up before the fire. She'd carefully made sure to pack only things she felt were going to be absolutely useful and necessary (and things she would have sold her soul for the last time she'd been stormcast into this world). She had only packed for Kaname to make this trip so she didn't have any other clothes than the ones she was wearing.

: _That's fine, I suppose that it doesn't really matter how bad your pants look, as long as you have a clean shirt and panties_.:

She'd settle that later. First on the agenda was the food supply. She'd packed two-liter plastic (former) soda bottle with dry instant rice and another one with pancake batter mix. She knew that kaname was a vegan so she figured that he could eat that stuff perfectly well as long as they were kept dry (hence the water-tight plastic bottles). Yuka had been rather proud of herself for thinking of it. She was also proud of herself for remembering to bring something to cook it on (on her first trip in she would have given a lot for even a small cookpan). She double checked the contents and was relieved to note they had made the journey intact and perfectly dry. She checked the soap and the granola bars she'd stored in plastic bags (she took a handful of the plastic bags too) and found that it too was sound, as were sundries such as the rope, the knives, the compass (the flashlight worked just fine) and other items she'd thought might come in handy.

:All in all, I think I did pretty well,: Yuka congratulated herself.

She tried to concentrate on those items that would be immediately and continually useful for surviving in the wilderness or traveling on the open road. Any extras had been ruthlessly discarded in the interest of preserving weight, for she had to keep in mind that whatever she packed he'd have to carry with him. Yuka had been guided mostly by what she would have about killed for on the last trip into the howling wilderness she'd taken. All the stuff might have been a bit much for one person to try to carry, but with two people it should be just fine. Yuka spent the rest of the while that kaname was asleep setting up a camp and re-packing the bags to maximize the space in each pack. Kaname tossed and turned restlessly in his sleep, as if trying to fight off something in his dreams. She thought of maybe trying to wake him up, but in the end decided it was best to let him sleep, he would need all the rest he could get. The sun was at midday when he groaned and opened his eyes.

"Hey sleepy head, rise and shine," Yuka said cheerfully.

Finally! Now that he was awake, she could make something to eat!

"Oh..." he groaned, slowly sitting up and looking around him. "My head. Where are we?"

There was no easy way to put this, so she'd just have to jump right into it.

"Remember that other world I told you about?" Yuka said a little sheepishly.

Kaname looked at her owlishly.

"Well we're in it," she finished, wincing a bit.

"You're kidding, right?" he asked a little flatly.

"Nope, sorry," she said, trying to sound chipper about it. "Remember all those rumors about how Youko Nakajima and me and Asano-kun all disappeared for that year? We all came here. Youko was supposed to be the only one, someone from this place went to our world to look for her, but he was followed by an enemy, and that enemy was the one who caused that rukus in the school that the state later declared was some kind of terrorist attack. Anyway, Asano-kun and I were more or less caught up in it and taken to this world as well. Youko was brought over here because she had... a special job to do. It turns out that she's actually from over here and, um, so are you. I've been trying to think of a way to get you back here for a long time now, the only way I knew of was through those freak world-storm thingies and, just your luck, one appeared."

"Th-this is crazy!" Kaname exploded. "Okay, enough of your weird sense of humor Yuka, where are the hidden camera's? I want to go home right now!"

The surrounding pebbles along the beach all rattled a little from the force of his emotions.

"You are home," she said. "You might not remember that year you went missing, but your people had been looking for you for a very long time and they managed to find you and bring you home. To this place. You're someone special, Kaname!"

"Special? Gimme a break!" he said, disbelieving her.

"You know its true," Yuka replied firmly. "Haven't you always felt it, that deep down you're different from everyone else?"

Kaname hesitated for a long moment then said

"That's just the isolation of intelligence, nothing more. All intellectual children feel left out by their own perception."

Yuka made a noise of frustration.

"Well what about all those odd incidents that keep happening around you? The way things you wanted or didn't want kept happening around you without you causing them? Didn't you ever once wonder if they were more than just accidents?"

"I-" kaname paused looking cornered. "They were just accidents, I didn't do any of them, I would never hurt anyone!"

"I know you wouldn't," Yuka soothed, feeling a pang of guilt at his distress.

How was she supposed to make it clear to him that he was special in a good way, without making him feel like a freak?

"You're too kind and gentle, you wouldn't hurt a fly if it bit you," Yuka tried to reassure him. "But sometimes a person can do things out of self-protection that might have consequences they don't intend."

Yuka waited on pins and needles, hoping he wouldn't take it the wrong way.

"So you're saying I somehow made that dresser move that almost hurt my brother and my grandmother was right about me?"

"Umm... not exactly," Yuka hedged.

She huffed out a sigh, trying to think of something to say to him that would make him see the truth and get him started trying to figure out whatever it was that had separated him and his emperor and get him moving towards fixing it. She decided to just level with him.

"Look, I'm going to tell you straight. I don't know everything, I probably don't even know _most_ things about the situation. I came here pretty much by accident the last time I was here, but I was... more or less involved with how the Queen of a kingdom called Kei got on the throne."

For the _worse_ , basically she had been involved, though her involvement had been more along the lines of keeping Nakajima _off_ the throne rather than putting her on it. She could take the easy way out and say she'd been manipulated by the crazy king Kou but Yuka had decided for herself that she would not allow herself to live the kind of pathetic existence everyone else seemed to content themselves with in which they constantly lied to themselves to make themselves feel better. Yuka had sworn to herself that if she was going to live by her own convictions, she would never let herself be blind to the darker corners of her soul. If she had guilt, she would bear it and try to make up for it. She'd make mistakes and she'd fail, that was perhaps her destiny, but at least she'd know that her mistakes had been made while she was trying to do what she felt was best.

: _I wonder if this really is for the best_ ,: Yuka thought as she looked at Kaname.

He was shivering and he looked frightened, even in the midday sun. Yuka wanted to wrap him up in a blanket, tell him it was all just a joke and they could both go home now. Come to that, she wouldn't have minded a good long dose of that annoyingly too-tight normalness right then if it came accompanied with a long hot bath and her warm safe bed.

"I do know a few things though," Yuka continued firmly, quashing the desire. "I know about kings and kirin."

She'd been delivered the lecture all about them by an old village wise man who had once been on a queens internal council.

"I know that you are the Kirin of Tai."

"What? That's impossible! I was born and raised in the same town you're from, same as you. Stop joking around and lets go home."

"But you're not the same, the seed that makes you who you are was the egg-fruit of a special tree that grows at the top of a mountain in the middle of this world. That tree is the only tree that grows kirin. That ranka that you came from blew into the huorai, just like Nakajima's did, and your spirit attached itself to a human embryo. You were born into that world without actually being from that world. You are the Kirin of Tai."

"But that's-" he protested. Yuka leaned forward and shushed him by placing her hand over his mouth and looking him directly in the eyes. She found that she could often intimidate people by doing that, there was something about people that seemed they, like apes and dogs and cats, could be challenged and frozen like prey if she caught their gaze hard enough.

" _Listen_ to me," she said seriously. "Better yet, listen to yourself. Listen to your heart. Listen to your dreams. All of this time, you can't tell me you haven't felt it. Haven't you heard it, now and then, sometimes just on the edge of waking? A voice?"

Yuka was going mostly by hearsay, on the gamble that the Kirin of Tai also had some of those spirit-beings that Keiki had commanded, and that they too could talk and were probably trying to reach him somehow and get him to go back home.

Kaname was sitting on the ground shivering, but clearly not because he was wet and cold. He looked like a lost little boy, scared and alone and uncertain.

"I... I thought I was going crazy," he said.

Yuka could hear and edge of a plaintive sob in his voice.

"I thought that all the things everyone whispered about me were turning out to be true. I didn't want to be a freak, like some kind of circus exhibit. I just wanted..."

Yuka looked at him understandingly.

"You wanted a place where you could fit in. Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but you definitely are not normal but don't worry, you're not a freak either. You're special, and not in a short-bus kind of way either."

"I know..." he murmured. "I've been seeing it. In my dreams. I can hear her, Sanshi. I can hear her clearly now. When we crossed worlds she told me about everything."

"Then it sounds like you know more than I do," Yuka said, both trying to encourage him and get down to business.

"It's strange, but that Taiki business feels like a dream, or like I was watching something that happened to someone else."

"Look around you, does all of this look like a dream?" Yuka lifted up her shirt to show a bruise that was the result of her sleeping for most of the night on a rock at the edge of the beach darkening her ribcage. "I don't know about you but I don't usually have bruises in my sleep."

The humorous way she'd said it got a wan smile out of him.

"So we're at least agreed that neither of us is dreaming," Yuka said. "Are we tentatively on board that you're the Kirin of Tai?"

Kaname looked at her for a long moment and turned his gaze inward.

"sanshi says that no other being is able to control Youma the way a kirin can, not even a king. She's definitely there and I can sense Gouran prowling around in there too... hey! I remembered his name!"

"Alright, progress," Yuka agreed cheefully. "Did Sanshi tell you anything about what we're supposed to be doing now?"

"You don't know?" Kaname looked a little desperately at her.

"Hey, I'm just the guide and protector. This is your show," Yuka told him. "I've been here before so I should be able to keep us alive and moving, but I'm going to take my directions from you."

"What do you mean protector, you're a girl!" Kaname pointed out.

"I fight better than you," Yuka rebutted.

Kirin were the essence of pacifism, which was why they needed youma to fight for them. If left to his own devices Yuka knew that Taiki wouldn't left a hand to defend himself and that wasn't going to help anyone in this situation.

"My instructors all say that I'm good enough to easily place in nationals and I've geared myself toward melee fighting, so yes, while you still need me, I'm your protector. You certainly can't protect yourself."

"Hey!" Kaname protested, nettled.

"It's true," she said flatly. "This place is dangerous, and not in the same way that our world is dangerous. There are actual bandits on the road and some of them won't hesitate to kill you and rob you instead of just rob you. More than bandits there are monsters called youma, who will actually eat a person. And as if that weren't enough to deal with, in some countries it is considered bad luck to be a kaikyaku, that's what they call a person from our world, and in Sou they round up any they find and take them to the nearest village to be tried and executed for the crime of being a kaikyaku."

Kaname looked at her in wide-eyed amazement.

"So, obviously you need someone to raise a hand to defend you. I'm it. As long as you need me, I'll be right by your side."

It was funny, but Yuka could have sworn she felt a strange, unearthly feeling pass between them. She furrowed her brow to track down the cause of her sudden unease but before she could find it it passed away. It almost felt like the world itself had heard her and decided that she had just made a promise or something. Yuka shook her head nad decided that it was probably just dizziness from hunger.

"I've brought some supplies that should help to feed us, for a little while at least. I think pancakes would be a little more ambitious than I can handle right now, besides, I don't have a bowl to mix batter in, but a little rice should be in my means to make. We'll both feel better after we eat. Then, we can get started on figuring out what you're here to do."

Kaname nodded, still clearly having trouble coming to grips with the situation. Yuka left him to think it over while she used some of the purified water from the water bottle, the frypan and the minute rice to make lunch. In theory, cooking rice over a campfire wasn't any different from cooking it over a stove, in practice... it was _way_ different. Yuka came out with something that wasn't quite burned, but parts of it were crunchy and parts of it were starchy and she would not have eaten it at home, but out here she was conscious of the fact that she had very limited supplies and that every bit of food was precious. It might not be the best, but hunger was a good spice.

"I think I chipped a tooth," Yuka remarked of her campground cooking halfway into the meal.

"I didn't want to say anything but it is a little more... interesting than the food I usually get from you," Kaname agreed diplomatically.

She didn't have plates or bowls either so they were eating from the same frypan she'd cooked it in with a pair of chopsticks improvised from a single stick found on the beach, cut and whittled down for the purpose. At least it saved on dishes.

"We need to know two things before we can decide on anything else. The first one is, why we're here. The second one is, where exactly here is," Yuka said to him. "Some places treat travelers nicely, other places..."

She left it hanging to remind him of the last example she'd given, the one with the executions in it.

"I don't clearly remember all of the details from when I was Taiki," Kaname said. "Some things are as clear as if I lived them yesterday, like the time I picked out Gyousou-sama to be the emperor, and the time that King En visited and they tried to trick me into bowing for him."

"Huh?" Yuka asked.

So Kaname related the story of being a young and uncertain Kirin on Mt Hou and not knowing what he was supposed to be looking for when he was supposed to know who the emperor was. And he found that as he talked about them to Yuka the memories themselves became clearer; he remembered other things like the divine maidens, and how he had tamed his first youma and finally, how he had been so drawn to and frightened of Gyousou and how he had, at his young age, decided that picking anyone would be better than being a fraud unable to pick a king so he had bowed to the general and they had set up to ascend the throne. Then his later tearful confession about how he hadn't seen the "aura" at all and the ensuing well-meaning trick by the En-Ou and the Enki to show him that as a kirin, he could only bow his head to his rightful ruler.

"I didn't actually know a lot of that," Yuka said when he was done. "I only knew a little bit from what Youko told me and from other odds and ends that I'd heard around. Do you remember how you got to be back home?"

Kaname shook his head sadly.

"I can remember some of my time in the imperial palace, but it all gets fuzzy toward the end after Gyousou-sama marches off to deal with a rebellion in one of his provinces. I don't know how I got to be back in my world or what happened to put me there. I don't know if my king is okay, or if my country is well. Gyousou-sama..."

"Heyyy, don't worry," Yuka treid to encourage him.

kaname made her feel like such an older sister, he was like the little brother she'd never had.

"We'll sleep here tonight and in the morning we'll break camp bright and early and then see what we can do about finding some civilization. There's bound to be a fishing village or a port or something around here, this looks like a good beach for it."

"Alright, but now its your turn," Kaname said. "I told you everything I know about my visit, now you have to tell me what happened to you when you came to this world."

Yuka got uncomfortable. Her part in the journey wasn't really something to brag about. Still, she supposed that, since they were in this together, he deserved to know the truth about it. She started a bit reluctantly, but Yuka told the story of how she had been swept along in Youko's adventures, and been quite taken with the idea that _she_ was the one meant to be the heroine of the story. So much so that when King Hou had come along with his offer to help her prevent Nakajima from ascending to the throne she had seized on it and become her former schoolmate's enemy. Yuka carefully didn't make excuses for herself, she didn't need them. Her actions had been her own and she should be aware of her fault in them.

"And before we parted and she sent me home, I told her I would live quietly and safely in the mortal world, get married and have ten kids," Yuka finished a while later after the sun had set and the two of them were huddled close to the fire under the single blanket she'd packed for him.

"I don't know how that's going to work out," she added after a moment. "I'm here with you after all, and we seem to have our work cut out for us."

"You seem like a strange contradiction, Yuka," Kaname said. "You don't offer excuses for your behavior, but you don't seem to apologize for it either."

"Even if I was wrong, and I'll own that I very clearly was," she replied. "The thing I don't regret was following my convictions. However, there is one source of regret for me about the whole business, and that is that my convictions stemmed from such impure motives. In that I believe I failed in right action. Still, even if I failed and fell short of pure integrity, that doesn't mean I can't try again and get it right this time."

Yuka smiled a little shyly. It felt strange for her to make such a speech, saying such things out loud, but it was nonetheless true for her. Yuka had never been the sort to let one or two little obstacles get in her way, that was probably why her world was so boring for her, there just didn't seem to be any challenge in it.

: _Much as I want to be the heroine of the story, my job here is to make sure Kaname gets his job done. I might not be the rightful heir or whatever, but being the knight's not so bad_ ,: she thought, looking at the sleepy-eyed Kaname a little fondly.

"You should rest up," she told him.

"What about you, Yuka?" Kaname asked.

"I'll be in in a little bit, I'm going to make sure there's enough wood for the fire and enjoy it a little bit more, then I'll come in and go to sleep."

Kaname nodded and obediently took the blanket and went into the tent. Yuka poked up the fire a little and looked upwards and out into the starry night sky.

: _Wow_...: she thought to herself as she actually saw them. : _You never see a sky like this where we live_!:

Yuka had been born and raised in the city, and all of the light pollution blotted out most of the stars.

: _I never knew there were so many of them_ ,: she thought in dawning realization.

Yet another thing it seemed that her world and society had lost in its never-ceasing march for progress that they never seemed to count the cost of. She'd miss this, when it was her time to go back.

: _I wonder though, if it will be possible for me to go back. Certainly there would be a lot more questions asked the second time I disappeared with someone and returned but they didn't_.:

The police and anyone asking questions about where she and Asano and Nakajima had disappeared to had been very careful not to press her too hard for answers, out of concern for her mental well being after what they likely saw as an ordeal. Yuka had the feeling that another such disappearence in which she was the sole returnee would be treated entirely differently.

: _I'll worry about that when it's time to worry about it. For now, I'm here to help Kaname. We're already past the point of no return, so there's no point in second guessing myself. I've made up my mind to help him, so I'll do the best I can_.:

Shaking her head out of her wistful turn of thought, Yuka put most of the rest of the firewood onto the fire to burn through the night and crawled over to the spot next to the kirin and stole under his covers to share his body heat with him. At any other time and with any other person, Yuka would have never done any such thing, but Kaname was Taiki, a kirin, not human and not really _male_ in the sexual sense. Strangely, though she often found him attractive in an _aesthetic_ sort of way, it was more the way she would admire a pretty painting or a flower, lovely but alien to her. She liked Kaname, but she didn't see him as boyfriend material, he felt like a brother to her, so she felt perfectly secure in curling up to him for the night.


	6. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 5

It was chill enough to see her breath when the weak light of dawn woke her the next morning. The sky was the kind of grey that meant cold sunless days ahead and the possibility of a constant mizzling rain that never quite downpoured but also never let up. Miserable weather for travel. Her body was sore and creaky all over from sleeping on the ground all night but regardless she forced herself to get up and crawl out of the warm little nest beside Kaname. The only way she would get anything remotely approaching warm was by getting the fire going. It had burned low in the night but she could still feel the heat of the embers buried safely in the ashes, they had been lucky that it had not rained during the night. She piled on the remainder of the wood she had saved out for the purpose and in a few moments, by blowing on the coals, she had the fire going again. She still had no bowl to make pancake batter with, but considering how simple minute rice had turned out the day before, perhaps it was better that way. Yuka started on making another serving of rice for the two of them, they couldn't travel on an empty stomach after all.

:Wow!: Yuka thought, taking another look around her. :It's... incredible here, so beautiful!:

She had traveled quite a distance in this world the last time she had been there, but the lands she had traveled through mostly looked a lot like her own home. The new land she was in was breathtaking.

Craggy grey mountains jutted pointedly up into the sky, with majestic white clouds resting in and around them sprawled out in every discernible direction in the inland distance away from the sea. Tall, rugged pines climbed up the slopes as far as they could go until the snow reached down from the tops of the mountains. The air was crisp, clear, cool. It looks like a wild land, suitable only for the strong and hearty. Yuka wasn't sure what it was about this place, but it called to her. She liked it.

"Good Mornin'," Kaname, said cheerfully a few minutes later as he crawled out, apparently wide awake and ready to go. He had the blanket wrapped as a mantle around his shoulders to insulate him against the chill of the morning. Yuka had simply slept in her hoodie.

"It's morning," she acknowledged grumpily.

"Not a morning person are you?"

"Oh I think that all morning people should be admired," Yuka said with a sharp, shark-like smile. "And then executed."

"You have an interesting sense of humor," Kaname told her.

He was being diplomatic of course. Yuka had a sly, occasionally biting sense of humor. The psychologist that her parents had sent her to thought that she used it as a way to distance herself from people.

"Meh," she replied. "Food's done."

Yuka and Kaname shared the fry-pan of rice and then after breakfast washed and put away the single dish then moved on to packing up the camp, such as it was. There wasn't a whole lot to it, Yuka had done most of the packing the day before.

"Now what?" Kaname asked next, like Yuka he was taking a look around him at the wild majestic scenery but unlike Yuka he seemed more afraid of it than pleased by it.

Yuka looked up and down the beach to her left and to her right.

"Well, we have two choices. Left or right. Pick one."

"How do we know which one will take us to a town?" Kaname asked.

"We don't," Yuka said with a shrug.

Thier attention was momentarily distracted by the sound of seabirds calling shrilly down the beach. They exchanged a look.

"Might as well try that way," Kaname said. "If it doesn't lead to only a good fishing spot for seabirds, it might be a sign of civilization."

Yuka thought of all of the seabirds that hung around in her home town, by the port, off the docks, in the parking lots and had to agree with him.

"Let's get moving then," she said.

The walk down the beach was easy and uneventful. There were no Youma to bother them and the pebbly beach was clear. Despite the chill it was actually quite pleasant and Yuka found herself joining Kaname in singing some popular songs from the radio.

"I never took you for an Utada Hikaru fan," she remarked a little teasingly after he sang the song from Kingdom Hearts.

"Her songs are so cheerful," Kaname said innocently.

"Most guys your age would commit seppuku before they admitted to liking a female popstar," Yuka felt obliged to point out.

"Most guys my age, my brother included, are too obsessed with conforming to societal norms for masculine gender roles," Kaname replied without missing a beat. He smiled a little shyly at Yuka and said

"As a sensitive artist type, I'm exempt."

Yuka smiled and shook her head a little in amusement. He had a good point.

They came upon a wide river flowing down from a lovely waterfall and out to sea. They were just about to debate following it inland and finding a town that way when the sound of human voices distracted Kaname.

"Hey look!" kaname pointed down the beach in front of them. "People!"

There were indeed people and other signs of habitation. There were fishermen with their boats tied up to docks bringing in their mornings catch while their younger children mended nets on the seashore. Women also worked alongside them, cleaning fish and burning refuse in sea-coal fires nearby. Yuka was surprised to notice that as she approached them, she could understand them perfectly.

"Remember Kaname," Yuka cautioned them as they approached. "Don't tell anyone about your being the Tai Kirin, we don't know what's happened in Tai and it may be that there will be trouble if word of your existence and location gets out."

"Alright," he acquiesced.

The fishermen paused in their work to carefully watch their approach. They clearly took in their state of dress, their clothes were plain enough and would probably not be too out of place anywhere they went but thier shoes were clearly foreign.

"Hello there!" Yuka called over, deciding to start things off. "My brother and I are travelers and our transport went down a ways out into the ocean. We were lucky to escape to a smaller vessel."

A lie, but a plausible one.

"Can you tell us where we are?" she asked. "It feels like we've been walking for ages!"

Misleading enough to where people might not question things too closely.

"You poor things!" one of the nearest ladies, a thick matronly looking woman in a saffron colored tunic and brown trousers. Her husband came up protectively by her shoulder and said

"You're in the fishing village of Senryu, in the kingdom of Tai."

Kaname and Yuka exchanged a long speaking look. They were already in the kingdom of Tai. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Best to gain as much information as they could before committing themselves to a course of action.

"Tai, huh?" Yuka said, pretending to think about it as if she were mentally placing it on a map. "That's pretty far to the north."

"Where are you two from?" the fisherman asked them a little suspiciously.

Yuka wasn't sure if Tai was one of those kingdoms that was tolerant of kaikyaku or not, she was sure it had been under the old king because Kaname/Taiki had painted him as a man of virtue and clear understanding, but Yuka had the sneaking suspicion that the kingdom was "under new management" and didn't want to take the chance on a policy change that could mean their deaths.

"Kei, most recently," Yuka replied easily. After all, that wasn't a lie for her. The kingdom she'd left from the last time she'd traveled to this world had been Kei.

"I heard that they have a new king," the fisherman replied.

Yuka understood immediately that he was testing her to see if she was a kaikyaku or not.

"A queen," she corrected easily. "She has famous red hair, and comes form Hourai."

The wife shot her husband a reproving look and said to him.

"Enough with the interrogation! Can't you see these poor kids have been through an ordeal?"

"It's not so bad as all of that," Kaname hastened to reassure them. "Yuka planned ahead, she had everything already packed up."

Yuka mentally cautioned him. Taiki, as a kirin, was incapable of lying. If he told too much of the truth, they could be in trouble. Maybe the well-meaning fisherman wouldn't mean to, but if gossip an rumors got back to the guy who had apparently led some sort of coup (she was assuming that's what had happened) about the Taiki showing up it could make things difficult. Best to keep a low profile.

"When you travel around as much as us, it's just common sense to be careful," Yuka interjected modestly. "We'd be happy to help out around here in exchange for a place to stay the night for tonight while we decide what we shall do next."

"Do you know anything about fishing?" the husband asked.

Yuka and Kaname both shook their heads.

"Right then, you- I didn't get your names," the wife said abruptly.

"I'm Yuka," she said. "And this is my brother Kaname."

She decided that using their real-world names would be fine, they'd answer to them and her name was common enough in this world (and she didn't want to introduce him as Taiki). The ruse that they were traveling brother and sister would prevent scrutiny or censure.

"I'm Sen and this is my husband Li. You two can help me clean our catch."

Kaname tugged on the hem of Yuka's shirt and passed her a wordless worried look, communicating that he would have problems with that suggestion.

:Right, Kirin,: she reminded herself.

"I'll be happy to help you gut fish if you'll show me how, but my brother here gets a little faint at the sight of blood, can he maybe mend nets or something?"

"Oh, sure, it's no problem," Sen the housewife said easily. "Kaname, you can go work over there with my sons."

She directed the young man off to start learning his trade for the day. Yuka was brought with Sen over to a large basket of fish, some of which were still wriggling.

"You've never gutted a fish before?" Sen said, sounding a little incredulous.

Yuka had the feeling that she'd be tipping her hand if she told the lady that the closest she had ever been to a fish that wasn't already prepared on her dinner plate was the local pet-store (who would certainly take it amiss if Yuka had tried to gut them) so she just said

"No, not once."

Well you're going to learn, I hope you're not squeemish..."

It was a good thing Yuka was not squeemish, because the little floppers wouldn't hold still and Sen expected her to insert the knife right into them. She was shown how to cleanly and efficiently cut, gut and discard then Sen was joined by two other women, probably other local housewives who all started working on the basket while Yuka worked out how to clean the fish for herself. As opposed to her, the other housewives movements were quick, efficient, practiced and economical, but once Yuka managed to get her mind off the fact that most of the fish were still alive when she cut them open, she managed the task well enough.

:I get the feeling I'm going to get very sick of the smell of fish very quickly,: she thought to herself.

But perhaps this temporary work would yield greater benefits for her than just a place to stay and knowledge of how to clean a fish (which might come in handy later). Women could gossip as much as men could, and they invariably did it better. Fishwives were pretty low on the societal totem pole, but they surely would have had to have heard something useful about the current state of affairs. At a natural lull between conversation topics, Yuka nonchalantly posed a question.

"I am a traveler to this place, so of course I wouldn't know, but what is the king of this land like?"

Sen thumped the fish in her hand unexpectedly for emphasis and she exclaimed

"This land has no king!"

The other two housewives, looking alarmed and quickly and furtively glancing around to see if she had been overheard shushed her swiftly.

"Sen! Hush! Someone will hear you!"

"I don't care who hears me!" the woman in question said firmly.

"You know that His Majesty, King Ansen, has sent out listeners to pick up such talk, and I think it's more than a rumor that the people who speak such words where ever those listeners can hear them or be reported to by someone who has have all gone mysteriously missing."

Yuka grasped the situation at once of course, and she had no doubt that Kaname, a scholarly kid who was an avid student of history, would grasp what was going on here as well. Many of the books and novels she read and so loved had been filled with situations nearly exactly like this. The usurper to the throne sends out trusted guards to spy among the people and quickly quash any rebellion before it can begin to form by getting rid of the rumblers of discontent. The king was dethroned, hidden in a place unknown by the man who had taken over to rule in his absence...

:And it's up to a plucky young kirin and his loyal sidekick to rescue the king, gather an army, dethrone the usurper and restore the king to his rightful place of rule,: she thought to herself with heavy irony. :Yeah right! I must have been crazy!:

It was one thing to read about those adventures happening to fictional characters in books, it was another matter entirely to even think that she could do something the same herself. Those fictional characters all had some kind of secret power to help them or something. Kaname was a kirin but he didn't know how to use his kirin powers, and Yuka was a relatively ordinary high school girl, yes she could fight, but she had the thought that the people she would be facing were all better fighters than she was and had been doing it for a lot longer.

And yet... and yet...

:If I don't do it, who will? Taiki has to restore the rightful ruler, that's his duty as the Taiho. He can't fight at all and no-one else besides me knows who he is. If the wrong person finds out, that false king is going to have him kidnapped alive and thrown in a dungeon somewhere no-one will find him so that he can't choose the new king!:

That way the true king was in no danger of dying because of his kirin, his kirin cannot choose another until Gyousou abdicates the throne, and Gyousou is prevented from abdicating the throne because he is imprisoned in places unknown.

It was a rather beautiful plan actually; one that neatly got around all of the restrictions the heavens had put into place to make certain that the proper ruler, the one chosen by the will of heaven, was the only one who sat on the throne. Keep king and kirin alive but imprisoned in a place no-one knew about then just rule in his absence "until a new kirin could choose the king" except that no new kirin would come, and by the time people realize that they might have been duped, anyone who would have been in a position to do anything about it would already have been gotten rid of.

:Still need more info...:

"I've never heard of this king Ansen," Yuka said innocently. "When did the kirin of Tai choose him?"

"Never!" Sen spat. "He is a false king, a pretender! A-"

"Sssshhhhhh!" her friends hurriedly shushed her. "Sen you can't say such things, you never know who might be listening and willing to repeat it."

"It is when a kings loyal subject will no longer speak the truth that a kingdom is truly lost," Sen replied staunchly.

"But think of your children, who will raise them if you disappear in the night," the other housewife replied.

This seemed to give Sen pause, for she lowered her eyes and went back to quietly gutting fish, a moment later, when she covertly looked around pretending to keep all of her attention on her work, she started to speak in a low voice.

"It was six years ago that the missing ranka of the Tai Kirin was found and restored to Mount Hou," Sen began in a soft voice. "Shortly after that announcement, the yellow flag was raised and the Shouzan, the pilgrimage to Mt Hou to choose the new ruler, was begun. I know from hearing around that the man who was chosen to be king was extraordinary, a military officer who had the foresight and initiative to realize that the former king's reign would be a short one and to shore up the failing bureaucracy with capable officers and officials he'd handpicked from the military. King Gyousou was already a legend long before he became king, so it was with relief and elation that we, the people, heard the proclamation of the revelation and Gyousou's ascension to the throne."

Yuka nodded encouragingly, so far everything the woman had said fell right in line with Kaname's story.

"His Majesty was not on the throne long enough for me to be able to form an opinion of him by his continuing actions and the capability of his rule, a scant year after he was enthroned he disappeared in the midst of a battle. The official story from out of the palace was that it was an assassination by one of his own retainers who was jealous of his ascension. A few weeks after the kings supposed assassination, the man who took control of the court until the chaos could be sorted out, Gyousen's brother in arms, a man named Ansen, announced that he had been confirmed as the rightful ruler by the Tai Kirin. No-one we know of, or have had any contact with, knows for certain whether this is true or false. None of us know what the Tai Kirin looked like so we wouldn't have been able to tell for certain if the boy that appeared beside him in the parade through the streets of the capitol city was the real kirin or not. I can say this however, ever since the new king has taken the throne the presence of the Youma have increased."

Sen nodded firmly. It was a piece of apparently long held wisdom that the presence of youma was a sure sign that there was a definite imbalance in the will of heaven.

"Thank you for telling me this," Yuka said warmly. "Are you the only one who feels this way about the new king? Haven't there been more rebellions, I mean?"

"Three years ago a civil rebellion took place in I Province, but the new king quickly quashed it. It is said that he took three days to kill the leaders of the rebellion and that he stuck their heads on pikes on the gates of the county palaces as a warning to anyone else who might think to continue the rebellion. Not the mark of a ruler who is guided by a kirin."

Yuka nodded her agreement to that as she grimaced with distaste at this Ansen's unnecessarily harsh disciplinary measures.

"Even after six years under his rule and many announcements that he has been selected by a kirin, many feel that there are too many things about Ansen's rule that ring false, but... people have become to afraid to even speak of it lately. There have been increasing rumors, here and elsewhere, that the king has created a special guard within his ministry that makes people who question his rule disappear. Most of the last of King Gyousou's loyal ministers and military officials have been disappeared, or have accepted the yoke of the new kings rule without complaint."

:Crap, this situation is worse than I thought,: Yuka thought to herself in frustration.

The usurper-king had had time to consolidate his rule, he'd thoroughly purged all of the officials who might question his ways, cowed the rest and then went on to solidify the countryside. By the sound of things, there were spies everywhere, just listening and watching for the least sign of interest and as soon as either she or Taiki showed it, they'd be arrested and questioned.

:So I guess I can't just show up in the imperial city and ask to join the rebellion, or start asking around if anyone knows where a pretender to the throne might decide to stash an inconvenient king,: Yuka thought whimsically.

On that thought a germ of an idea took root. Maybe that should be their next course of action then. Find where the king was being hidden.

:After all, there can't be too many places that a usurper could stash someone of that importance and not have someone notice it after a while. Granted, even if he is a king, he's only one man, and one man can be made to disappear pretty easily, but still, it would have to be a place that was very secure...:

She'd talk it over with Kaname later on in private. He was pretty darned smart, he'd probably have an insight into the situation she hadn't thought of. Yuka continued to "shuck fish" as it was called there until lunch was called, then she and all of the others ate a communal meal on the beach. Taiki ate the rice plain, without any fish but Yuka dug right in, famished after having to eat her own cooking over a campfire. They were taken off after lunch to more chore in order to earn their keep, Yuka was put on the drying racks, salting the fish for storage, and Kaname was set to watching the babies to make sure they didn't get into trouble. So went their first day in the Other World. Not exactly glorious kingdom-restoring stuff.

Yuka didn't get an opportunity to talk with Kaname about what she had learned that afternoon for as soon as they were done with work for the day Sen and her husband herded them to their humble little home, which was little more than four walls, a roof and a fireplace, for dinner. It was simple fare, but Sen did not skimp on her guests and for that Yuka was grateful. It was good to see that kindness was indeed universal in some people. Of course, the plentiful supply of food could have also been because they had five children, three boys and two girls, but Yuka didn't think that was the case. Kaname seemed at ease and at home with them despite the fact that, unlike Yuka, he could not have had experience in sleeping in such a place.

After dinner, Li took out a stringed instrument that looked like a mandolin and sat with it next to the fire, plucking out a song with gnarled, fisherman's hands while his family happily sang along with the words. It had about ten verses, about a fisherman who cast his net out to sea and pulled up a shining rock that enabled him to breathe under water and all of his adventures beneath the waves. It was a pleasant domestic scene, not one that Yuka had any experience with certainly. Her father was always busy and for the last year or so Yuka herself had been living away from the family house in student housing to attend her school so Yuka usually came home to a silent, empty house. Dinners were stilted affairs because the family was extremely strict and traditional. Seeing one family all crowded into a room spending time with each other without politely veiled insults and power struggles was a new sight to Yuka. She wished her house was more like theirs.

It was with a feeling of both relief and a little wistfulness that Yuka rolled out the spare futon and blanket and nestled in among the wife and younger sisters near the hearth. She'd have to talk with Kaname in the morning about thier next move.

The next morning dawned bright and early, but the fisherman's family was up and around well before dawn, getting everything ready to sail out with the tide. After they had gone, Yuka motioned Kaname off to one side down the beach to signal that she wanted to speak with him alone. She told him what she had learned and Kaname added that he had heard some few mutterings to the same effect among the stoic fishermen.

"So, now what?" she questioned. "I know we have to find wherever it is the new guy has stashed the king, but we have to do it quietly, without arousing suspicion. We also need a cover, a way for us to travel without being watched or guarded. And more to the point we need to know where we're supposed to be going. There are only a limited number of places that Ansen would be able to hide the king securely without arousing suspicion."

"You're right about that, but you don't go far enough," Kaname replied. "The place where he is hiding him would have to be secure, but more importantly, Ansen would have to feel secure hiding him there."

Yuka was puzzled for a moment but quickly caught on.

"Ah! He'd keep the king in a place that he thinks is either too well guarded by his own people for the king to escape from or is the last place that a person would look for him!" Yuka wa sreminded of a scenario from one of her novels. "Does Tai have a mental institution?"

"No, those haven't been developed here," Kaname said. "But good thinking. Can you think of any other possibilities?"

"Two spring immediately to mind, one of them would be in the dungeons of the palace itself."

"That seems a little too obvious, it's the first place a person would look..." Kaname said skeptically.

"Unless they thought that it was the last place a usurper would have the temerity to imprison the rightful king," Yuka rebutted. "It's right under the imperial palace, so getting into and out of it would not exactly be easy, plus, if Ansen has full control over the palace guard, and by now he no-doubt does, there would be no-one who would report about one particular prisoner. Still, it does seem a little bit difficult to manage, and plus, there's always the danger of the king being able to inspire loyalty and being right next to the locus of power."

"What's the other option?" Kaname asked.

"If Ansen can't risk imprisoning the king where he can keep an eye on him for fear of the prisoner escaping and being able to reestablish his power immediately by right of his divine authority, then he'd send the king to a place that far away from the seat of power but still secure and loyal enough for Ansen to feel comfortable imprisoning him."

"His own provincial palace!" Kaname exclaimed.

Yuka didn't know a whole lot about the structure of things in the world but she did vaguely recall that a kingdom was divided into provinces and each of those provinces had a capitol with a provincial palace for the governor. it made sense that the new ruler would also be a governor and equally that he would have a palace of his own.

:After all, those spies of his have to come from somewhere.:

"We wouldn't be really really fortunate and you would remember what province that Ansen was governor of would you?"

"No," Kaname said, looking crestfallen.

"That's alright," Yuka cheered him up. "You were just a kid at the time and new to your place, you can't know everything. I'm sure it can't be too hard to find out what province the new king hails from. Now all we need is a way that allows us to travel around without raising suspicion."

"We could be merchants or peddlers," Kaname suggested.

"We don't have anything to sell and those guys are always prime targets for robbers," Yuka rebutted. "We need something unobtrusive... hey... do you know how to play an instrument?"

"Not really," Kaname replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because entertainers are the only one's Ive seen so far that can travel around with impunity. My father wanted me to learn the violin," Yuka said. "I'm sure this world must have an instrument that's similar to what I'm used to. Buskers and musicians travel everywhere and no-one really wants to rob them because everyone knows how poor they are."

"Problem. You have no instrument," Kaname pointed out.

"I've seen something similar so I can just buy one at the first large city or town we come to, until then, we'll have to make our stores last," Yuka said firmly. "We'll start tomorrow since there's no point in getting a late start today and spending and extra night on the road."

"We can probably find a map to study so we know where we're going," Kaname said. "I'll ask around about it. You should see what else you can find out from the village wives about affairs here in Tai, the more we know, the less likely we are to give ourselves away by ignorance."

The two of them shared a nod, both feeling mutually galvanized, and set to work. It was another day of doing odd jobs, but for Yuka it was a relatively fruitful one. A traveling medicine peddler had been through the town just a few weeks ago, sharing gossip of the rest of Tai along with his wares with the relatively isolated little fishing village. It was said that travel on the roads could be chancy, the main thoroughfares that the king needed to collect taxes were kept orderly but on any other road there were no royal patrols to keep the bandit population down and a traveler took his life into his own hands traveling on them. The wives also shared some gossip of other provinces and imperial affairs; the province of Bun, where the rebellion that King Gyousou had been (reportedly) assassinated during was now in a state of chaos. The king had taken over the mines outright, installed his own people as overseers and collected every speck of profit from the water crystals rather than merely collecting taxes from the sales as had always been done. The local populace, it was said, was nothing short of a slave labor force. Any attempt at rebellion was quashed thoroughly by the kings special squadrons (which were, by report, little more than thugs with imperial armor). Bun was not the only province to suffer, in all other provinces tithes of grain to supply the palace and the army had robbed people even of their seed grain for the coming year and all farmers were worried about how they would feed themselves if they could not plant in the spring after winter. There were civil unrest and rebellions leading (it was said) to mass executions in every province where the Black Guard was not present in force. The countryside was wracked by wild bands of Youma, killing and destroying an already frightened and beleaguered populace. There were rumors of an armed rebellion against the current king by the retainers of the old king, who claimed (rightly) that the king had not been proclaimed by the kirin of Tai.

"Are you sure you and your brother want to start traveling right now?" Sen asked her as she knelt over another basket of fish. "The roads are unsafe, there are youma about, and I don't like the rumors of the Black Guard I've been hearing about."

"I am afraid that my brother and I must travel, and quickly," Yuka said. "We plan to leave tomorrow, at first light... after I wash these clothes."

There was no way she was traveling smelling so strongly of fish, a girl had to have her standards.

"Thank you for your hospitality, Sen," Yuka said sincerely. "I won't soon forget it."

"Could you not at least wait a few days?" Sen asked anxiously. "I hate the thought of the two of you alone on the road. You seem like a capable enough young woman, and your brother is very sweet, but these are dangerous times. There roads are plagues with bandits and Youma run freely over the countriside."

"It is a frightening prospect, I'll grant you, but my brother and I have urgent business and we must move quickly, before the snows of winter can descend."

It was a concern. The climate in Tai was a cold northern climate, ringed by mountains, beautiful bays and fjors, Yuka could definitely appreciate Tai's sheer natural beauty, a beauty that took her breath away even in a humble fishing village, but Taiki had told her that winter came early and hard, and once it set in, it could be suicide to try to stay on the roads without a place to keep warm. They were working on a stilted time-table.

"In that case," Sen said. "I have a young nephew, he's about your age, a little older than you are..."

Yuka raised her eyebrows at Sen. This sounded like a matchmaking ploy. Both her mother and her friends had subjected her to enough of them in well meaning but utterly misguided attempts to bring her out of what they perceived as antisocial behavior to make her wary of them.

"He owns a small ship and he takes on passengers as well as cargo. Truth be told, he's been helping a certain captain to smuggle refugees out of Tai nad into En and Kei to escape the devastation here. The ship can't make it out to sea, its certainly not large enough for that, Darin and The Iliki sails from port to port, but if you have something to offer for fare, I could make him give you a discount rate."

"You'd do that?" Yuka said in surprise.

She and Kaname might have helped them gut fish and tend nets and babies but that was for room and board, there was no real call for Sen to go out of her way for them. Sen smiled a little and said

"I don't know why, but I've got a good feeling about you and your brother. Over the years I've learned to trust my feelings. My mother had a bit of the weather-touch in her, always knew when a squall was on the way, I think I can say it would be wise for me to trust my guy on this one."

"Well thank-you! Thank-you very much. My brother and I will talk over our destination and plans and we'll let you know about them as soon as we finalize them."

"Finalize..." Sen said, as if tasting the word. "You do have a peculiar turn of phrase there in Kei, don't you?"

Yuka smiled at that and said nothing. She had never actually traveled by sea in a boat before, but considering the dangers in traveling on the road she thought it might be a wiser idea to take Sen up on her offer of a boatride.

Kaname met up with her at lunchtime and the two of them took their meal to eat more privately where no-one would overhear them. He had found out where Ansen's provincial palace was, mainly because the fishermen were grumbling about how much money in taxes and gem-wealth went to renovating the smaller government building into something resembling the palace at the kingdoms capitol. It was a province far to the north nestled in between two arms of mountain ranges stretching east-west across the province. It was fjord-country, with steep cliffs cutting up from the sea-side and the soil of the land of the province was thin. It was accessible only through one road, unless a fool wanted to try to take his chances in the mountainous wilderness (he was always welcome to go get himself killed stupidly if he wanted to). Yuka shared Sen's offer with him and the two of them settled in to discuss thier options.

"It sounds like trying to access it directly from the sea is a lost cause, at least at first. We need to get in there and scout around without being noticed."

"It seems that our only choice is to go in directly through the main road since Ansen and his Black Guard will no doubt be patrolling the waters for any attempts to sneak in. If we go disguised as ordinary travellers, like you said earlier, there's no reason why anyone would raise a question about us."

"We could say we're looking for a place to winter over and we heard that there's work to be had in construction, or that the taverns in, what province did you say it was again?"

"Shin Province," Kaname replied.

"In Shin Province sounded like they might be able to support an extra muscician or two. We could have Sen's nephew sail us to the port town nearest the road that leads north to Shin Province and pick up instruments and more suitable clothes there then continue on in disguise. There would be no reason for anyone to suspect us, even if they searched us they wouldn't find anything out of the ordinary and its not like we're going to go parading in with you in your other form," Yuka said.

"What about when we arrive in Shin Province?" Kaname asked. "What are we going to do then?"

"I'm not sure yet," Yuka replied honestly. "I was thinking that we could use our disguises to keep an ear out. Soldiers always talk, even if it's only boasting, and they never pay attention to harmless muscicians. We should try an see if we can overhear anything interesting. Then we'll need to find a way to sneak into that provincial palace."

"You make it sound like that's no big thing," Kaname replied rolling his eyes. "I think I should remind you that you're talking about sneaking into a provincial palace."

"Ah, but a palace that is currently under construction. There will be all sorts of men, carpenters, builders, every-day workmen, craftsmen artists, all of them rushing about to and fro on jobs only they know the purpose of. It should be easy to slip in under the general chaos of a construction site, just keep our heads down, look like we're doing something vitally important and if anyone questions us, say we're on an errand from so and so and he told us to go get something. We'll just have to play it by ear."

"This is an awfully haphazard rescue operation," Kaname remarked.

"In the absence of information and resources, we do what we can," Yuka said with forced cheer.

Truth to tell she was far from sanguine about their chances. There was still a lot that could go wrong, but Yuka felt down in her bones that the experience she'd gained in her previous visit wasn't wasted. She just had to keep her thoughts positive.

:All of this is provided that this Ansen guy is even keeping the emperor there in Shin Palace,: she thought with a pensive pang.

Still, if this didn't pan out, they'd just keep looking. If luck was on their side, then they would eventually find where the Tai-Ou was being kept.

"The port town nearest the road to Shin Province was called Kaien," kaname said.

Yuka didn't doubt it, Kaname had a memory like a steel trap. Without even trying he was in the top five of thier class.

"Then that's where we'll go," Yuka said firmly. "Don't worry Kaname, we'll find him. Even if this doesn't work, we won't give up and we'll keep trying."

Yuka briefly wondered if she should get into contact with her old schoolmate, who was (so far as she still knew) the regnant Queen of the Kingdom of Kei. She would probably have tried that route first, there was nothing like using a little royal authority for getting things done after all, but she and Taiki had already landed in Tai, so there was no point in traveling all the way to Kei just to possibly learn that there was nothing Youko could really do for them. Yuka would feel better about the situation if she and Taiki tried all that they could do for themselves first before asking another to become involved in thier affairs. Her sensei had once given her the good advice of "always try the hardest path first" if that path didn't work out for her she could go back and try her other, easier options, but she would always be satisfied with the knowledge that she had done the best she could.

Aside of that, despite having parted amicably enough, Youko and Yuka didn't exactly have a very close relationship. They were no longer enemies, but they weren't really friends either. It wasn't exactly the kind of relationship that Yuka wanted to impose on, and since they were there already...

They found Sen later on that day and told her that they would like to commission her nephew for a one-way trip to Kaien. Sen raised an eyebrow at the location but didn't press the matter, only said that she'd send her daughter over the river to talk to her sister who would speak to their brother who would send his nephew. It sounded like a complicated process but it gave Yuka some insight into the differences between her world and theirs. In this world, family ties still really meant something. They defined a person's place in the world and were a safety net against uncertainty.

Once their course had been decided on and the wheels set to turning on the way they would get there, Yuka felt freer to turn her attention to other things. Their supplies would keep but it might be a good idea to have at least a little of the local currency, but a small fishing village in the back of nowhere in Tai was hardly likely to have a pawnshop. She very, very cautiously broached the matter with Sen, who had turned out to be a fount of practical wisdom.

"Suppose I wanted to sell some jewelry and receive a fair price in exchange, where would I look to sell?" she asked cautiously.

Sen looked over at her silently for a long moment and with a small shrug said

"In small towns and villages, you'll get barter. A Village elder keeps a fair weight and some coin for traveling pedlars and the like. Often times the sea blows up some trinkets of value on the coast..."

That last was said with heavy emphasis and Yuka smiled at the silent help the woman was giving her. If anyone were to ask, that was where Yuka had come by the jewelry she wanted to sell.

"And we use the weight to tell how much coin a given trinket is worth. I wouldn't put all your coin in one purse of course and don't ever keep your most valuable coin in a place that is easily accessible. Likewise you don't want to put it in a place where a robber would automatically think to ask for it in such a situation. Use your pack only if you must, that's the first place they look. A small pouch at your waist with the smallest curerency, tucked safely on the inner lining of your sash is customary. Another pouch on your person with all of your truly valuable coin is advisable."

"Someplace like, on my upper arm, or around my upper thigh?" Yuka guessed.

"Good places, you're already thinking like a sensible traveler," Sen said approvingly.

Sen went on to give her other sensible advice for travel, like what was a good price to pay for a nights lodging at an in, how to avoid getting cheated by sharpsters, how to guard against pickpockets, and, when Yuka asked, where good places to find second-hand clothing would be. Yuka didn't know how she could ever repay the woman for the immense kindness she had shown Yuka and Kaname.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason the HTML in the doc editor doesn't want to work for me tonight so no italics for you I guess. Hope you enjoyed it anyway. Please look forward to my next great project The Convenient Queen!


	7. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 6

Yuka stretched and warmed up her muscles in the chill dawn air. She was wrapped in her thick fleece poncho with her clothes on under her, but she knew that she'd warm up as she exercised. The hinma that the kirin of Kou had granted her in order to learn to fight the last time she had been in that world had trained her muscles and reflexes in the warriors arts, but after she'd returned, Yuka had taken up her own study. It was one thing to have something merely given to her, and another thing to develop her own strength as well, Yuka wanted something of her own to stand on, and she didn't want to be helpless ever again.

_:I've come a decent way_ ,: she allowed herself. : _But I still have a lot to learn. I only hope that the skills I have will be enough to protect Kaname while we are on the road.:_

Hence the extra training...

Escrima was not a martial art that was mainly slow movements or stationary poses, it was a vigorous dynamic style with a lot of light quick movements. She started usually with a series of warming stretches based on yoga (one thing that she and her step mom actually managed to have in common for once) and then moved on to practicing her footwork; hook-steps, advances, shuffle-steps in patterns both clockwise and counter-clockwise then she added in body-weaving techniques, still concentrating on her lower body movements to get her heartrate up. Then she took a bamboo stick she had found and adjusted for the purpose and added in the basic hand movements against a post in square stance, not moving anywhere, linar strikes for head, temples, collarbones, ribs, knees and feet then repeating the linear strikes with rodunda strikes, two of each still stationary against a stationary target. She then added on the delicate "taps" for wrist-movement strikes against targets, where her arm was extended but the power came from highly controlled wrist movements. Next the disarms, where she slipped in to disarm an opponent, or, with the right leverage, take him down completely or put him in a lock hold.

When Yuka felt sufficiently warmed up with the basic stationary exercizes she put the various movements together into patterns. She combined linear and curving strikes into patterns that attacked, blocked and countered all the while keeping her body moving, weaving in and out of the way with her foot movements, forward, back, turn, reverse, advance, retreat to the side, retreat to the back. Her strong arm wove in and out fluidly; full extension, tucked in, relax the wrists... the stick a constant blur of motion as her body moved in and out of the patterns. Always her empty arm was moving. Escrima was not fencing where they couldn't seem to decide what to do with an extra limb, when her stick was at full extenstion attacking her opponent, her off arm was tucked in close, ready for the block, when her stick blocked, her other arm darted out, going for the disarm, her hands constantly circling each other. After three patterns at a liesurly pace, going for accuracy, Yuka picked up the tempo and made the patern more complicated with more controlled wrist movements, more rodunda strikes to give her a real work out. By the time she was satisfied with herself for the morning, she was usually covered in a light sheen of sweat and interested in a quick dip in the nearby river. It was never very pleasant, but it was the best she got in a place with no indoor plumbing.

Kaname sometimes came and watched her morning practice. He could admire how fluid her movements were, almost like a dance but in no way was it decorative. They both knew without having to say it out loud that what she practiced with renewed intensity every morning would probably be called upon to save thier lives later. Yuka sort of wished that she would have had a little more time to learn more. She had advanced quickly, mainly due to her own athletic ability and the intensity (goaded by the memory of being helpless in this world) and effort she put into her training but she had still had only a little over a year to study it. To pick up an entire style from scratch, even with a lot of practice, that wasn't as long as it sounded. There were still many more advanced techniques that she had not had the chance to learn yet, and in this situation they would have to remain unlearned. What she had would have to be good enough.

It was a week of learning the ins and outs of life in a fishing village. Yuka had grown up in a big, impersonal city so the ways and mentality of a small rural community was a closed book to her. People were people no matter where one went, and like anywhere else they had thier rivalries and thier cliques, their ways of judging socially acceptable behaviour and their ways of celebrating the particular patterns of their lives. Yuka had never once imagined herself going to a village potluck but Kaname had been all for it and had dragged her along whether she liked it or not. There was food and lively music and dancing (and Yuka did indeed find that they had something that was near exactly like the violing she was used to). Every person there recited an impromptu poem or song about something that had happened in thier lives recently, and they all sang the Song of Kings, a blessing and entreaty to the gods that the kirin of Tai would pick a ruler who "would reign a thousand years" with beneficence, wisdom and charity. Kaname had gotten a little emotional around the end and Yuka had silently put an arm around him to comfort him as an older sister might comfort her younger brother.

It was something of a cultural shock to her, she had known that the world they lived in was different, but the last time she'd been there she had been outside of the system and not pulled into the life of a simple village community. There were tears and there was laughter, they all shared the sorrow of their times filled with danger and uncertainty, but stoicly kept on with their lives, despot king or no despot king. As Sen had put it, the tide still came in and the tide still went out. babies were born, Elders were taken, families still needed to be fed and winter staved off. Who sat on a throne hundreds and hundreds of miles away had little effect on the sea. It was probably that sort of thinking that had gotten them and thier ancestors through many a difficult king.

The work they learned in thier time waiting for Sen's nephew Darin to arrive to take them to the port city was the owrk that was common to an ordinary citizen. They learned about their way of life, thier philosophy and they way they veiwed the world and felt about thier place in it. It was different world entirely from what Yuka and Kaname had grown up accustomed to. Thier days had always been ruled by the meticulous tick of the clock counting out the hours and minutes they would perform one function and got to or be at a specific place. The acverage life of a peasant in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms was ruled by the rising and setting of the suns, by the shifting of tides and the changing of the seasons. At first it seemed unusual not to have to worry about "from this time to this time I have to eat breakfast" and "from this time to this time I have to study math" and "I have to be at the station by this time to catch the train, so I have to leave by this time exactly". Life seemed more leisurly, though Yuka and Kaname both were absolutely certain that neighter of them had ever worked so hard in all of thier lives!

There was cleaning and tending and making and mending; fish were to be caught und gutted, lunches and dinners prepared, housework to be attended to. Yuka had stared at Sen in uncomprehending shock at the first time she told her that she was expected to wash the laundry by hand... in a tub! Never before had Yuka missed hot and cold running water from a tap so much as those time when she had to heat up water by the pot ful over the hearth, haul it over to a tub half-filled with soapy cold water and dump it in, then haul yet more water to repeat the process. And she hauled the water dialey, several times a day, to keep up with all of the washing that Sen felt was neccessry. There were no dishwashers of course, so all pots for cooking had to be scrubbed by hand, and a peasant didn't have more than one set of dishes for making and eating meals on, so each dish had to be washed immediately after it was dirtied to make it ready to use for the next meal. By the end of the day, Yuka's neck, back and shoulders ached painfully form all of the unaccustomed work. Sen had given her more than one look of disbelief when Yuka had been forced to admit that she did not know how to do something. As a consequence, she picked up sewing, as well as cleaning and gutting fish and hauling water among her skills. She did get better at cooking over a fire too.

If the villagers found Kaname's abhorrance of blood and general squeamishness to be a bit missish, they were generally too polite to give him greif over it... either that, or enough people had seen Yuka practicing her warriors arts in the morning and were aware of her devoted attachment to her "younger brother" that they weren't going to risk making her angry. Even though they had worked harder than they had ever worked in thier lives keeping up with the average life of a fisherman's family, they both found themselves a bit sad, and a little reluctant to leave, when Darin's ship the Kilike tacked into the little bay. They had grown fond of the close-knit family with so many siblings that they stumbled over each other in the mornings. Even breaking up the inevitable fights was something thet had found to be a new experience. Yuka had liked Sen's earthy good-sense and humorous advice on many subjects ranging from birth to death to childrearing. Life obeying the whims and dictates of the ever-chang9ing sea made uncertainty an certainty, and as a result most tended to have an earthy pragmatism about them, sensible and cautious. She found she was going to miss that for in that short a time Yuka had come to see Sen as a mentor and mother figure far better and more suited to her than her own. Kaname too had taken to life as an ordinary peasant citizen of Tai, even as he slowly seemed to awaken to his Other Self as the kirin of Tai, a fact which they kept carefully to themselves. He remarked to her one day that he believed spending time as an ordinary person would give him a greater persepective when it came to advising his lord.

"Gyousou-sama is a soldier," Taiki confided to her. "He acts like one and he rules like one, even though he had a deep understanding of what is best for people, and of the ways people think and act themselves. I think it would be good for someone in the court to know and truly try to understand the people from thier own point of veiw. When he makes a law about them, I'll be able to say something knowledgeable about it instead of just doing nothing and not understanding what's going on."

Darin, Sen's nephew and the "Captain" of the Kalike (if one could call a person a captian of a very small vessel that can easily be sailed by one person alone) was a handsome young man of about twenty or so. Yuka and Kaname would have both called him a sempai. He had the same dark brown hair and bright blue eyes characteristic features of that part of Tai and in that village, but along with that he had an open face and a warm and genial manner which he clearly was trying to cultivate into charm... as evidenced by the way he tried to flirt with Yuka on first seeing her. He stayed overnight for that evening with the agreement that they would sail with the morning tide and they spent the rest of the night catching up with family business (Sen's and Li's family were a bit wide-spread up and down the coast so Darin had plenty of custom if his work for the unnamed sea captain, smuggling people out of Tai and the despotic rule of the new king, fell through.

"It's a relief to finally be on our way!" Kaname said to Yuka as they stowed thier travel packs under the racks they were to try to sleep on in the tiny closet sized room on board the ship. The two of them offered to help but were told that they'd be in the way if they didn't know what they were doing as Darin set the schooner out to sea. It was a few minutes into the voyage when kaname discovered something terrible... he got seasick. Yuka was the picture of health, rmbling about on deck and investigating all of the nooks and cranies, asking questions of her captain about what this or that did and how it worked but Kaname spent most of the time slumped over the side of the rail or with his head in his hands curcled round his stomach.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Yuka said about an hour into thier journey when poor Kaname had been reduced to miserable dry heaves.

"Are we there yet?" Kaname asked plaintively, looking just utterly wretched.

"Too bad I didn't think to bring some dramamine tablets or something," Yuka said sympathetically, patting him on the shoulder. "I didn't even think to bring asprin now that I think of it."

kaname couldn't reply, his stomach was trying to expel something that wasn't there.

"Well, just make sure you stay hydrated," Yuka said helplessly, offering him the water bottle with fresh water in it that she'd filled before she left. "You'll be in a really bad state of you get dehydrated, kaname."

"Ghlurk!" was Kaname's reply at the sight of the proffered water.

Yuka waited until the spell passed and tried again with the same result.

"Maybe you should go lay down and see if you can't just sleep through it," Yuka said after the fourth attempt to get him to drink something.

Kaname nodded wearily and she hauled him to his feet and supported him through the rocking and wavering motion of the ship and into the ships cabin where he collapsed onto the bottom bunk and curled up into a puddle of misery.

"The first think I'm going to learn to do afer we rescue his majesy is to get back my proper form so I'll never have to set foot on another ship ever again," Kaname mumbled.

Yuka smiled sympathetically and let him pillow his head on her lap. She ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, which was damp with sweat created by his sea-sickness. After a little while, Kaname at last fell into a sleep where his body's reactions to the sea could not reach him and Yuka left him there to hopefully sleep his way through the journey.

"How's your husband?" Darin asked jovially from behind the wheel as he slightly adjusted the course to take better advantage of the wind.

"He's my brother," Yuka corrected primly. "And he's fianlly asleep, poor thing."

"Some people just don't take well to the sea, as for myself, I don't think I've ever been sick a day in my life," Darin replied easily.

"That's good for you," Yuka replied politely.

Truth to tell, her people skills had always been a bit lacking. Most people didn't quite know how to take her sharp honesty or her abrasive personality, they usualy assumed she was subtly making fun of them, and perhaps they were right, Yuka had never seen the point in not making a truthful observation about a person if she felt they had it coming. Whether they benefitted from it or disliked her because of it was entirely up to them.

"Not big on polite conversation are ya?" the young captain observed.

Yuka grimaced a little.

"That obvious, is it?" she said dryly.

"Only a lot," Darin chuckled. "That's alright, I like a woman who speaks her mind and has a spine. It makes them interesting. As far as I'm concerned, the sea is no place for the weak and delicate, and I always judge a person by the sea."

"So then you don't like my brother I take it," Yuka scowled at him.

"Don't get yer wind up woman," Darin said with a disarming smile. "Got a temper like a summer squall, you do."

Yuka narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, Darin's grin widened.

"And there's the warning lighning, guess I'd better find a safe harbor ta tack into. I think I like you fer that."

Yuka unconsciously pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow, trying to decide where he was going with the flattery.

"Just because Kaname's my brother and I'm not married, doesn't mean I'm looking for what I can get, Mister Darin," Yuka said a little sharply. "If that's your aim, you'd better sight it somewhere else."

Darin mimed a blow to his heart.

"I've seen my auntie gut a fish with more mercy, woman!" he said, laughing.

"I have a name," she replied with a repressing tone, but she was smiling in spite of herself. Darin seemed like he was one of those people that had the effect on people.

"That name being?" he queried.

"You've already been introduced to me, and I don't like having to repeat myself," Yuka replied. "How long until we reach port?"

"We've a fine wind and a following sea," Darin answered in a conversational tone as he expertly trimmed the sail. "Since we sailed out on the earliest tide, and it's such a fine day for sailing, we should be there by high-sun."

Yuka nodded, and tried not to think about the last time she had been on a boat. It had been after her meeting with the former King of Kou and his unfortunate kirin. Kourin had used a hinma to change her face via an incredibly excruciating process that had felt like she imagined that dipping her face in acid might feel, so that Yuka would not be recognized and then sent her out to track down the "evil Kaikyouku" Youko Nakajima. Yuka had caught up to her on board a ship sailing to En and they had fought each other. Yuka's body had been controlled by the hinma that Kourin had placed inside of her (with her own consent) but Yuka's body had already been naturally athletic, and she had discovered that her body had absorbed most of the movements that the Hinma had used in that fight, the fights previous and following it.

:With that second-hand... or is it first hand... do you call it second hand of first hand experience if it's your body, but you are not the one actually performing the moves?: Yuka wondered to herself. :Well anyway, after my exposure to that proffessional level of fighting skill and my own training in my own world I should be able to fight well enough to protect Kaname. I hope:

Yuka knew well enough however that when it came to something important to her or someone she cared about the word "should" had no place in her dictionary. She had to believe with everything in her that she was capable, otherwise she'd start to second-guess herself, and hesitation in a fight like the ones she would be facing would cost her her life, and worse, Kaname's life.

: _I won't lose_ ,: Yuka commanded herself, closing her eyes and concentrating her attention inwards. : _It is not a matter of try or want, it is a matter of will and must. I won't back down, I won't step back, I will move forward.:_

Of course this was not the first time she'd used those words to push herself into doing something she was afraid of. Yuka had terrible stagefright, especially when she'd been younger, but the only way her father and her new step-mother had ever given her the least amount of attention was when she won. Her father had wanted a prodigy with the violin and if Yuka had not been born with such a gift naturally, then she would manufact it by working her fingers to the bone. The musical world, even for a young one, was as cuthroat and viscious as any cometition and it took a certain kind of mentality to succeed in such an environment.

: _Too bad all of that training never gave me any real people skills,_ : Yuka thought with a slight tinge of regret.

If there was ever anything that could make a girl cynical and anti-social it was the back-stabbing world of beauty pageants where a person could never really trust anyone around them. The nice girls got eaten alive before the qualifiers, the only ones who won were the ones who were willing to claw thier way to the top regardless of anyone else around them.

:And people wonder why I'm such a bitch,: Yuka thought to herself with an internal headshake.

It was one reason why she had gotten so badly picked on by her classmates at school. Having been exposed to the sort of back-stabbing machinations that went on in a heavilly competitive environment, yuka had little time or patience for falsity and she could see it all around her. They way people bowed thier heads to each other then whispered about them behind thier backs, the way people used groups and rumors and cruel humor to bully and manipulate other people, all of it had just made her sick. Sadly, while Yuka could read people easily (the result of assessing her competiton and psychologically manipulating them to lose beofre they ever even got out on stage... a good tactic to use if she wanted to win) she couldn't approach them or engage them in ways that came across as ingratiating or charming, usually Yuka came off as verbally abrasive or plain bitchy.

: _But I have to admit that I was mostly to blame for my own isolation,_ : Yuka admitted. : _Youko was right when she pointed out that I was shutting people out by burying myself in my books. I didn't even try to make friends. Maybe it was because I didn't want to be a hypocrite, but writing everyone else around me off without even giving them a chance to try and be friends with me is not the way to go either. And she was right to call me on it_.:

When they'd been students, Youko had been nice to her, but she hadn't talked to Yuka anyplace where anyone else could see them together. They'd never eaten lunch together or hung out after school, they hadn't had club activities together, so again Yuka had come to think that their friendship was all only in her head and it had hurt her. She had such a hard time letting people in in the first place.

: _I think our relationship was always destined to end badly,_ : Yuka thought with regret. : _Just like all of my other ones it seems_.:

But now she had Kaname! No-one else seemed to like him much because he unnerved most people. Even his own family felt there was something otherworldly about him. Yuka knew why he was the way he was though and that gave her a way to understand him in a way no-one else would. She also knew that he wouldn't hurt her, as a Kirin emotional violence was just as valid a form of abuse as physically striking someone, and his nature was against it, so Yuka could really trust him with all of her heart and know that he would never stab her in the back. For the first time in her life she had a real friend. One she knew would never hurt her, or deprive her of affection, one she could trust her heart to. She didn't love Kaname in the sense that she wanted a physical relationship with him, but she did truly love him. Yuka would do anything for him, give her life to protect him because she was the one person she could give her heart to and know that she wouldn't have yet another piece of it ripped out and eaten.

_:No matter what happens, no matter how dangerous it is or what I have to face, I'll protect Kaname. I swear it!_ : she promised herself.


	8. Book 1: The Path of Sorrows; Chapter 7

The port city of Kaien was not what Yuka thought of as a city, certainly. All of the buildings seemed low and thick compared to what she was used to, and there didn't seem to be nearly enough of them to constitute what she thought of as a city.

"I guess this would be a city in a world where there just aren't as many people," she murmured to herself.

"When I was here last time," Kaname added. "I didn't get to travel around much like this, I was always being watched over. I was on Mount Hou in Brushjar Palace for most of the time, and then after I chose Gyousou-sama I spent most of my time in the palace except for the diplomatic mission to Ren, and even then I spent almost all of my time inside the palanquin. There was one time I went out exploring Kouri but that was with Risai and Goy-sou-sama."

"I spent almost all of my time out and about, it can be pretty nerve-wracking when you don't know where your next meal is coming from though," Yuka said.

"My home port is this place too, so if you're ever looking to find me for a hire, you can usually find me at the Cloudbreaker, it's a pretty well known tavern frequented by my sort on the west side," Darin told her. "I do hope you'll come and find me again, Miss Yuka."

The special way Darin tried to catch and hold her eyes communicated wordlessly that he was hoping she'd look for him for other reasons than his employment. Yuka rolled her eyes.

"We may need to hire you again," Kaname replied, either oblivious to (or simply ignoring) the by-play.

"Thank-you for your assistance," Yuka said, a little stiffly. "My brother and I had best be on our way if we are going to find accommodations for us and settle our business here quickly."

"There's an inn off Threadneedle Street, one that caters to cloth-merchants, that has clean rooms and reasonable rates. There's even a bathouse down the street, though I warn you that the proprietor of that place doesn't like women. Tell Kelma, the proprietress of the inn, that Darin of the Kalike sent you."

"Thank-you again for your help," Kaname said as Yuka wordlessly shouldered her pack.

"C'mon Kaname," she said. "We have a lot still to do."

Kaname smiled a little at Darin and the young man shook his head looking a little amused. When the kirin caught up with Yuka he said

"I think he likes you."

"I think he sees a young woman traveling on her own and is interested in seeing what he can get. He strikes me more as the sort to enjoy a challenge than the reliable kind."

"Maybe," Kaname said in reply to her tart rejoinder. "But I also think you never give yourself enough credit."

Yuka looked blankly back at him. Kaname, who was unable to avoid being aware of peoples reactions to Yuka, just shook his head.

"If you're not aware of it, then it doesn't do any good for me to tell you. It's something you have to be able to see for yourself."

"Okay," Yuka said with an indifferent shrug.

The strange turn of conversation didn't seem to have anything to do with her plans for the rest of the day so Yuka wasn't too interested in it.

"I guess since he recommended it, we'll try getting a place to sleep for the night at that inn he told us about," Yuka decided. "If we're really lucky, there will be a second-hand clothes market nearby and we can get clothes for ourselves that won't stand out."

Sen had also told her about that. Yuka clearly didn't have the skills to make her own clothes or the wherewithal to hire a tailor right then, so she should probably do what most of the common laborers and working class people did in the cities and villages, and that was to buy second-hand clothes from a market and remake them to fit herself.

"This place isn't nearly as hard to get around in as Tokyo is, but I wonder how they know where they are and where they are going if none of the streets have streetsigns on them," she remarked to her "brother."

"I doubt that having street signs would do any good," Taiki replied a little dryly. "I think that most people are illiterate here anyway, and the ones who are educated, generally have enough money to hire a rickshaw or buy a mount."

"I guess that's a good point," she said after thinking about it.

"As for the problem of knowing where they are, I think most people just sort out the streets by function," he added as they passed a small market square where two portly housewives were squabbling over a head of cabbage.

After a few more turnings and wanderings they found a relatively well-tended street lined with shops that had houses built above them and signs that depicted needles and spools of thread or bolts of cloth or balls of yarn and knitting needles. One sign on a corner nearby depicted what looked like a pie or a bowl of soup and a bed.

"Think this must be the place," Yuka remarked.

Kaname nodded agreement and the two of them walked into the inn. It was a bit different from what Yuka was accustomed to thinking of as a hotel, where there was a desk and a receptionist who gave them a key and rang for the bellhop. The door opened out onto what looked to be a common room. There was a long bar at the back of the farthest wall and a fireplace on both the right side and the left side of the room. Instead of private tables and chairs there was a long wooden table with benches in the middle of the room and smaller tables settled along the walls. A thin herring-boned woman with a sharp eye and a voice like a crow greeted them.

"We heard this was a good place to spend the night,"Yuka said, hoping to get on her good side right away. "Darin sent us."

"Humph! I suppose he hasn't sent you to settle his tab, young raskal," the woman said sharply. "And I don't take in charity cases, you'll be paying me half in advance."

"Wow, there's some customer service for you," Yuka muttered.

Kaname shrugged and gestured her forward. Yuka pulled out the spare purse that held the least amount of coin and jingled it once, just curious to see what the woman's reaction would be. It was almost comical how suddenly she changed from wary and suspicious to as close to welcoming as Yuka suspected she was ever likely to get.

"It'll be five silvers for a night," she was informed hastily.

Yuka blinked in surprise. She wasn't terribly widely traveled and didn't know a whole lot about the money system of this world, but she had traveled enough to know what the average cost of bread, clothing and various sundries she'd had to purchase for herself last time cost.

:And if a merchant had to spend that much every night he wanted to travel,: Yuka thought sensibly to herself, tallying the numbers in her head. :He'd never be able to afford to sell his wares.:

She had the sneaking suspicion that this woman was trying to take her for a gull.

"I think that's a little more than we're looking to spend," Yuka said firmly.

"That's for my best room, and it comes with laundry, and board included," the proprietress said sharply.

"Well then, how about your second-best room, and we can find food for ourselves," Yuka haggled.

The laundry they would keep, Yuka didn't know the area well enough to know who would be a repudable place to entrust with thier clothes and who wouldn't.

"Three and a half silvers," was the prompt reply. "You and your..."

"Brother," yuka supplied.

"Brother, then," the proprietress said. "Can have a private chamber and your own sleeping accommodations. There's a bathouse down the way."

:That sounded like a not-very-subtle hint,: Yuka grumbled inside her head.

Yuka shared a glance with Kaname. Three and a half silvers was cutting more deeply into her meager travel funds. Though they still had quite a few of the larger pieces of jewelry that Yuka could still sell, they had just started on their journey and had a lot of work still left to do.

"I'm not sure we can afford that this early in," Yuka whispered to him. "Every coin we spend now is less we will have later."

"And she's actually not being honest about the price," Kaname admitted reluctantly.

Yuka could tell he was torn between his kirin need to tell the truth, and his desire not to harm anyone even by implication. Sometimes the truth hurt. But, that did give Yuka some leverage to bargain with.

"I would be willing to pay seven coppers for a night's stay, four for the laundry and a further three for food."

"You rob me blind!" the proprietress replied, but there was a small smirk hovering about her lips that said that Yuka had passed her strange little test. "A silver for a night, seven coppers for laundry, and seven for the food."

"A full silver for the night," Yuka conceded.

After looking around her she had decided that the place was up to her standards of cleanliness and didn't really want to risk some of the other standards of the other innkeepers who might not be as fastidious as she. "But only two for the laundry and three for board."

The mistress of the inn gave her a long penetrating look and nodded. Yuka opened her coin purse, carefully counted out the equivalent of half of the coin she had agreed upon and handed it over to the proprietress who made if disappear as if by magic. The old woman turned sharply on her heel and gestured her guests to follow her up a narrow rickety wooden stairway to one side of the left fire-place and down a narrow hall to the third door which was opened with a copper key and she gestured them to go in.

As rooms went it wasn't anything to brag about. It was very small and cramped, nothing at all like the rooms in even a modest hotel that Yuka was accustomed to. There were two narrow futons laid out on raised wooden frames with two chests for storage at the foot of each. There was no fire place but one wall did seem to emanate heat from the brick of the chimney and there was a very very narrow window to let in light that closed with a wooden shutter. For the standards of the place she was in, Yuka thought that it was decent enough.

"Thank-you very much, we'll leave our travel packs here if you would please lock up behind us," Yuka said.

No-way was she trying to carry everything on her back as she wandered about the city looking for things, there was a good chance they'd get robbed of everything they owned.

Yuka and Kaname grabbed out one of the smaller cache's of jewelry covertly so the woman wouldn't see what they carried on them and think to help herself, and deposited thier belongings in the trunks which the old woman, as a gesture of good faith, locked herself right in front of them and handed them the key. They bowed to her in thanks and made their exit.

"There's still plenty of daylight left, what do you want to do first?" Yuka asked. "Pawn the jewelry or look at clothes?"

"Jewelry," Kaname said.

Typical guy, anything he could do to get out of clothes shopping...

They meandered around for a bit, getting a feel for the city. One thing was for certain, the citizenry was on edge. The streets were regularly patrolled by mean-looking toughs in black uniforms and wherever they were found smiles were strained, people glanced nervously around and clearly tried to act normal. When a person was detained by a pair of the guards over what seemed to Yuka to be some minor infraction people in the surrounding area looked down and away, pretending they couldn't see, as if by doing so they could keep it from happening to them.

:I'd call them cowards except that I'm a little sure that these people have no real concept of revolution,:Yuka thought with a little pity. :Everything is ordained for them by the will of heaven, and if they have a terrible ruler then they have only to wait him out and the heavens will give them another one.:

There it was, the kink in the system, complacency. Yuka thought that she much preferred her home's style of government... in no way was it perfect but at least she got some say in how things were run.

:I wonder what those distant heavens think of this situation,: Yuka thought to herself.

Technically the king was still alive, even if he was not on the throne, perhaps they all thought that the current style of rule, which went against some of Heaven's Law ,she was sure, was ordained by the rightful king instead of a usurper that was keeping him locked up.

:If that is the case, then they would definitely feel that the king is ruling against their Law and then Kaname...:

Yuka looked worriedly over at her friend, wary of any sign of illness that could herald the onslaught of Shitsudo for him.

:If we don't rescue and restore the rightful king soon, Kaname could be the one who suffers for it,: Yuka thought in distress.

There was no time for wandering around now. Yuka picked up the pace and made for the nearest pawn shop she spotted. Kaname was left to catch up, wondering at her new sense of urgency. Yuka didn't feel like explaining to him right then, she'd get as much done as she could with the remaining daylight, and they'd hopefully start out tomorrow or the next day for Shin Province.

:We just have to find him,: Yuka thought. :I won't let what happened to Kourin happen to my friend. I won't!:

**Author's Note:**

> When I started this work I hadn't done much in the way of actual research on the world (I think that I was about halfway through a fan translation of the first novel when i started writing) so please bear that in mind is some of the details seem less than kosher. I tried to edit them as best I could later on, but many details are part of the plot. Also, as for the misspelling of Asen's actual name, I had not located Eugene Woodbury's translation at the time I started writing so I was going off a badly translated summary of the events that happened in "The Shore In Twilight, The Sky At Daybreak." So I apologize for an inconsistencies and hope you will enjoy this fic!


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